- The latest TSC promotion exercise offers 1,631 school leadership positions to serving teachers across the country.
- Yabesh Onwonga argues that transparent selection will be essential to maintaining teachers’ confidence in the process.
- He says merit must determine who advances as educators compete for the limited leadership positions.
On paper, 1,631 Teachers Service Commission vacancies should be a moment of celebration. In reality, for thousands of Kenyan teachers, the announcement will trigger a more uncomfortable emotion: suspicion.
And that suspicion did not come from nowhere.
In a country where public jobs have too often been treated as political currency, every recruitment exercise is now subjected to one brutal question: will merit win, or will connections win?
The Teachers Service Commission has reopened applications for 1,631 promotional positions for serving teachers. The vacancies include 1,470 Deputy Headteacher II positions, 132 Deputy Principal III posts and 29 Senior Master II positions. Applications close on September 14, 2026, and candidates must apply through the official TSC online platform.
That is the procedure.
But procedure alone does not create public confidence.
Teachers have heard promises about merit before. They have watched colleagues stagnate for years while others appear to move faster. They have witnessed the frustrations of career progression in a profession that routinely demands sacrifice but does not always reward it.
So TSC should understand the mood.
Teachers are not merely applying for promotions. They are testing whether the system they serve actually respects them.
A teacher who has spent 10, 15 or 20 years in classrooms should not have to wonder whether a politician, broker, relative or well-connected intermediary can somehow outrun years of experience and professional achievement.
And this is where TSC must be exceptionally ruthless.
If merit is the criterion, publish the criteria.
If experience matters, demonstrate how it is measured.
If interviews determine the winners, make the process transparent.
If regional considerations exist, explain them.
If a candidate fails, there should be a defensible reason — not whispers about mysterious phone calls, political endorsements or invisible hands.
Kenya has no shortage of rumours. What it lacks is institutional transparency powerful enough to kill those rumours.
The Commission has an opportunity to do precisely that.
These are school leadership positions
The 1,631 vacancies are particularly sensitive because they are leadership positions. These are not insignificant appointments. Deputy heads, deputy principals and senior masters help shape discipline, academic performance, teacher management and the daily culture of schools.
Put simply: the quality of these appointments will eventually be reflected in the quality of education received by Kenyan children.
That is why political interference, if it occurs, cannot be dismissed as an administrative inconvenience. It would be an assault on the education system itself.
There is also a question TSC must answer convincingly: why have these positions been re-advertised?
The Commission has indicated that teachers who successfully applied during the earlier promotion exercise do not need to apply again. That clarification is welcome. But in an environment already saturated with distrust, TSC must go further and communicate clearly enough to leave no room for confusion or manipulation.
Because desperation is a dangerous market.
Where opportunities are scarce, brokers emerge.
Where recruitment is opaque, rumours flourish.
Where candidates believe merit is insufficient, some will inevitably look for shortcuts.
That is how corruption finds oxygen.
There is no promotion for sale
TSC must therefore send a message before the first interview begins: there is no promotion for sale.
No politician should be able to claim ownership of a vacancy.
No official should be able to intimidate an applicant.
No broker should be allowed to manufacture hope and sell it to desperate teachers.
And no candidate should believe that paying money guarantees promotion.
The Commission should also remember that teachers are taxpayers, parents and voters. They are citizens who have spent years teaching Kenya’s children about integrity, responsibility and fairness.
They deserve to see those principles practised by the institution employing them.
This promotion exercise is therefore bigger than 1,631 vacancies.
It is a credibility test.
TSC can either demonstrate that Kenya is capable of running a public promotion exercise where competence defeats connections — or reinforce the cynicism of citizens who already believe the system is rigged.
The choice is brutally simple.
Let the best teachers win. Let the evidence speak. Let the politicians stay out.
Kenya has enough political appointments.
Its classrooms need professional leadership.
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And if TSC truly believes in merit, this is the moment to prove it — not with press statements, but with results that even the loudest sceptic cannot dispute.
By Yabesh Onwonga
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