Phew!, the year 2024 is now gone. And teachers are hoping for a better New Year after a frustrating year with teachers claiming to have gone through a lot of suffering under their employer-Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
The year 2024 begun with promotional interviews that were conducted in December 2023 by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) whose results were released around February/ March 2024.
Most tutors who underwent the interviews were in high spirits of optimism after the commission’s CEO had promised them absolute fairness in the conduct of the exercise. But when the results trickled in, the hopes of many teachers were dashed and crashed.
A classical case is of a teacher who had seen most of his learners who were also teachers get promoted as he received a regret letter. The tutor had to be counseled for he had decided to quit teaching and go try his luck in hawking. The interviews that gave those who had acted and those who had overstayed in one job group a preference were never to be. This, resulted in go slows in some schools across the country.
Job group
Claims of teachers who had left the service, those who had not finished three years in one job group and those who were yet to be employed receiving promotions exacerbated and confounded the teaching service as a whole hitting their morale to an all-time low.
This watered down the whole process resulting into teachers urging the unions to push for the re-introduction of the famous schemes of Service (SOS) and complete obliteration of the much maligned Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) initiated by TSC to the chagrin of a good chunk of teachers.
Under the SOS, teachers would automatically move to the next job group after a stay in one Job Group for at least three years.
As the teaching fraternity was still reeling from the pains and scars of the botched up promotional interviews, their payslips were visited by two strangers- The Social health Insurance Fund (SHIF) and a Housing levy deductions were introduced.
This, added to the Provident Fund that most teachers pay monthly according to their grades, pushed the teachers’ financial strength to the brink with their credit worthiness degrading significantly with banks and saccos.
Unlike before, teachers could no longer access loans easily from these financial institutions. They are now subjected to stringent conditions to access the badly-needed facilities to pay school fees for their children or build descent houses through development loans.
Bursary
An in-depth survey done by Education News in 2024 revealed that for the first time in history, most teachers were compelled to admit their children in day schools across the country and a rare phenomenon was witnessed during bursary distribution meetings.
Teachers joined the rest of the public to scramble for the little bursary funds available through the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) or through the County Government among others in order to get sponsorships for their children in secondary schools and universities.
But even as they line up for the bursaries, most teachers have learnt the hard way that the society does not consider them to be deserving for the scholarships and bursaries and hardly get the privileges. Their applications are outrightly declined by bursary committees who view the better off that the ordinary citizens eking a living from menial jobs around.
Yet, unknown to the society, teachers have gradually suffered the ignominy of poverty owing to consistent raid into their payslips by Government without commensurate compensation hence rendering them some of the poorest earners in the economy.
Workshops
The year would not end with teachers being required by the employer to attend workshops that included the famous retooling exercises across the country. During these workshops, concerns were raised by teachers when their employer reneged on its promises to pay all attendees of the training some allowances to cover their expenses.
A scenario was told where one of the officers manning a training venue told the educators that their agitation for the allowances was misplaced as they were on duty as usual and therefore adequately compensated. They were shell-shocked.
For the first time in a decade, teachers were seen walking to and from their homes as they attended most workshops in 2024. Majority blasted their unions for turning a blind eye to their plight. They found the unions to be selfish and only interested with their union dues.
The junior school teachers clamour for permanent employment after two years of internship dominated the year 2024. The interns disrupted learning through organized street protests. This led to some of them opting for other greener pastures. Public at some point could not comprehend how university graduates were being paid twenty thousand shillings yet performing same duties as other teachers. This affected the morale of those teachers. Things however changed when the Government later moved to convert most of those interns to permanent and pensionable terms to the relief of everyone in the sector.
Deductions
The year 2024 was recorded as the worst year in the teaching fraternity. As the teachers gear up for 2025, many are not optimistic for a better year. Reports of a possible increase in SHIF deductions will sally any hopes of an improved teaching environment.
The TSC’s plan to allow any teacher who has served for only six months to compete for upcoming promotional vacancies with their long-serving counterparts will put the last nail on the coffin of a highly demoralized teacher.
By Kaptich Tarus
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