By Calistus Imbayi
The Government through the Ministry of Education has allocated Sh600 million to teachers training colleges across the country this financial year to facilitate education programmes and cater for other financial requirements in the institutions.
This was revealed by Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed during a graduation ceremony at Kaimosi Teachers Training College where over 300 teachers graduated with P1 and ECDE certificates.
In addition, she said all TTCs will continue to receive quarterly grants from the Ministry towards emolument for the non-teaching staff and other recurrent expenditure.
The 2017-2018 financial year 4th quarter grant allocated to Kaimosi TTC amounts to Sh4.8million which will soon be disbursed in the college account, she said.
Amina also promised that the National Government will continue to support Kaimosi TTC until it is fully developed after the college was relocated from its former location that has since been taken over by the Kaimosi Friends University.
The Cabinet Secretary recalled that when President Uhuru Kenyatta visited the Kaimosi complex in 2017 he saw the dire need for basic structures and committed Sh82 million for the construction of physical facilities.
Hence she was happy to note that in the current financial year 2017-2018 the ministry has already provided Sh42 million and that the balance will be provided in the next financial year which begins in July this year.
Amina reiterated that one of the ministry’s major policy priorities is to upgrade the P1 course into a diploma programme once the competency based curriculum is fully rolled out.
She added that in line with plans underway to sensitize Principals, Deans of curriculum, Tutors, Teacher trainees on the teacher education competency based curriculum and other early learning inventions like “tusome and early grade Mathematics”.
She added that the ministry has created two new directorates to serve Early Childhood Development Education and teacher education which will call for a close collaboration with the County governments and Teachers’ Service Commission.
