By Wasike Elvis
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Chepkoilel branch Executive Secretary, Sammy Bor has urged President Ruto to fulfill his promise of employing more teachers.
During the campaign period, Ruto had promised to employ 58,000 teachers during his first year in office in his education pledge charter.
Speaking to the press in his office the union boss said that the acute shortage of teachers was now becoming a threat to education quality thus compromising public education confidence among citizens.
“Shortage of teachers may in a great way affect the cognitive growth of learners. We believe the President and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) are already putting up measures to ensure the mass number of unemployed teachers in the country get employed. The charter also states that a similar number will be hired every year and we are looking forward to this,” said Bor.
Bor said that the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) implementation needed enough workforce to meet its huge demand to enable a smooth transition.
“CBC has fundamentally changed the role of teachers as it is guided by the needs of not only the curriculum but also that of the learners. Great mastery is going to waste as well-trained teachers who attended great training schools lack employment. TSC should put in place logistics that will hasten the employment of these teachers to enable CBC to take shape,” added Bor.
Apart from the Ksh. 25 billion to be set aside for capitation, teachers training and recruitment in marginalized areas, the charter also proposed a lot of goodies including the establishment of a national fund to mobilize grants, scholarships, and bursaries from both private and public sponsors to cater for non-tuition expenses.
