The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has demanded equal pay for equal work done by teachers in the country.
Speaking to Education News, the Union National Deputy Secretary General (SG) Hesbon Otieno stated that the teachers handling Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) should be paid commensurate to the workload they have been given.
Otieno also called upon the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to prioritize salary increments for teachers who were not well considered in the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
“Classroom teachers who were not well considered in the last CBA 2017-2021, should be considered more on salary increment in the CBA 2021-2025,” he said.
At the same time, the Unionist urged primary school head teachers mandated to manage JSS to ensure proper management so that the section remains in primary schools permanently.
“The Presidential Working Party has given us 3 years before the decision is made to take JSS to secondary schools. Within these 3 years we should prove our management ability to ensure that the classes are permanently domiciled in primary schools,” said Otieno.
The proposal to domicile JSS in primary schools was among recommendations in a report by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) in December 2022.
Initially, the committee formed to gather views on the current CBC curriculum filed and released its report in December 2022 on the reviews that were needed.
The Deputy SG expressed confidence that primary school heads can handle JSS well and therefore called upon the government to give disburse money in the current primary schools which he noted is the only place where there is enough space to handle the pupils.
Meanwhile, Otieno urged the TSC to use an easy grading systems for teachers claiming that the current system is quite confusing to teachers and suggested the adoption of the previous system.
“On grading of teachers, using grades like B5, C1 to D5 is quite confusing to teachers and so they should come up with an easier grading system as it used to be before,” he said.
The current upgrading of teachers by TSC led to the scrapping of some job groups and merging of others.
Under the new system of grading tutors, the previous P1 grade which was under Job Group G, was scrapped and replaced with Grade B5 and designated as the new entry grade for all teachers in the primary school level.
Other grades were re-structured and re-named as follows; job group J was changed to job group C1, K to C2, L to C3, M to C4 and N to C5.
Apart from job groups J to N, the higher rank which was designated as P, Q and R were later renamed to D1, D2 and D3 respectively.
After the request by KNUT for additional job groups S and T, which the TSC granted, the two grades were re-named as D4 and D5 respectively.
By Michael Oduor
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