By Roy Hezron
Public school teachers will now have to go for mandatory refresher courses which will determine chances of promotion and their fate in the teaching service as well.
This follows the rollout of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme by Teachers Service Commission (TSC) on September 22, 2021 at Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA) in Karen, Nairobi.
The programme will guide the employer on promotion of teachers under the TSC Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) that came into force on November 8, 2017. The TPD modules will be among the mandatory conditions for promotions of teachers in all promotional teaching Grades.
“Teachers will be required to undertake prescribed professional development programmes to facilitate their career progression as per provisions of Regulation 48 of the Code of Regulations for Teachers,” reads the CPG document in part.
Among other mandatory conditions that a teacher or lecturer should meet for promotion according CPG include existence of funded vacancies in the approved establishment, minimum qualifications per grade, relevant experience and satisfactory performance.
This directive will affect about 331, 232 teachers which the Commission had as per 2020 excluding those teachers on unpaid study leave and those with disciplinary cases (as captured in the Economic Survey 2021 report) both from public primary and secondary schools, and Teacher Training Colleges.
This implies that moving forward, apart from a teacher’s academic papers, the Commission will shift more focus to TPD modules for promotion since according to TSC boss Dr. Nancy Macharia, TPD will be a life-long learning programme which will be organized in six tiered competency levels where each level will take five years to complete after which a teacher will be required to renew his/her teaching certificate.
According to the Commission’s data as captured in the recently released Economic Survey 2021 report, provisionally by last year, out of 218,077 teachers in public primary schools (excluding teachers on unpaid study leave and those with disciplinary cases), 491 teachers are Masters and Doctorate (Ph.D.) degrees holders, 17,930 teachers are Bachelor degrees holders, 21,632 teachers are Diploma holders while 178,024 teachers are Certificate holders(formerly P1 Certificates which has been phased out).
In public secondary schools and Teacher Training Colleges, data from the Economic Survey 2021 report revealed that out of 113,155 teachers, 1725 had Masters and Doctorate (Ph.D.) degrees, 108,109 teachers had Bachelor degrees, 11 having Post Graduate Diploma in Education, and 3,310 teachers having Diploma qualifications.
The CPG is not clear on the entry requirements to TPD modules and it’s not clear whether the Commission will include them for those teachers yet to join the teaching service.
If this will be the case, it will be a hard hit to 17,938 teachers who had enrolled in various Teacher Training Colleges (TTC) countrywide by 2020 since they will be required to enroll for refresher courses after the completion of their training to stand high chances of employment.
According to one of the institutions accredited to offer the TPD programme, the course has been structured into the introductory module which introduces teachers to TPD and to the Seven (7) Kenya Professional Teaching Standards (KePTS) for both teachers and instructional leaders and has five (5) chapters which are to be completed within one year at a cost of Sh 6,000.
After the introductory module, teachers and the instructional leaders will then proceed to level one module which will be divided into two different modules, one for the teachers and the other for Instructional Leaders.
Level One Module will have 5 chapters and will require a teacher or an instructional leader to take one chapter per year for a period of 5 years but to a maximum of 7 years, at a minimum cost of around Sh 30, 000.
Level two to Level six Modules will each take 5 years meaning that for a period of 25 years a teacher or instructional leader will have to spend a total of Sh 150, 000 to complete the training.
The CPG which contained the TPD programmes was introduced in 2018 to replace the Schemes of Service (SoS), which guided promotions. It faced opposition by the then Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General Wilson Sossion who insisted that it was TSC’s duty to boost the capacity of its staff at its own cost.
However, this has now been resolved after all the three teachers’ union notably KNUT, Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers (KUSNET) agreed on the implementation of TPD in the recently signed non-monetary 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) signed in July 13, 2021.
“In recognition of the fundamental shift in policy in public service and with a view to promote, enhance and maintain high performance standards in the teaching service, parties hereby agree that the Commission shall implement continuous Teacher Professional Development Programmes and Performance Evaluation system,” reads the CBA in part.
It adds further that: “To this end, in compliance with Regulation 48 (1) of the CORT, parties reiterate that every member shall undertake the Professional Teacher Development programmes prescribed by the Commission from time to time.”
Under the new arrangement, all teachers will now be required to undertake modular training in selected institutions which include Kenyatta, Mount Kenya and Riara universities, and Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI), which will issue certificates as evidence of compliance.
“Parties reiterate that every member who successfully completes a professional teacher development programme as provided in clause 13.2 above shall be issued with a teaching certificate by the Commission as evidence of compliance,” adds the CBA.
