By Azael Masese
Teachers in Kitui County have termed the deployment policy as selective against teachers from the region, saying this is demoralising them.
Under the deployment policy, teachers appointed to administrative positions must serve outside their home counties.
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Kitui branch Executive Secretary Simon Mutunga said less than ten teachers were promoted to serve as deputies outside the county.
“This is compared to the more than 120 teachers promoted to serve as deputies in schools within Kitui County and teachers are not happy about it,” he said.
He stated that more than 90 teachers transferred to serve as deputy heads are from Nairobi County while the rest are from Murang’a County.
According to the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) deployment policy, those promoted to serve as deputies must be in job group M or N.
Consequently, it locks out teachers largely from rural schools and outside Nairobi who are in lower job groups.
“However, majority of teachers here are in job group L and if they are not promoted to administrative positions, they might stagnate in one job group for unnecessarily too long.
We need a share of the national cake when it comes to promotions and as a hardship area, there is need for affirmative action for teachers to be promoted,” he noted.
Mutunga said a similar affirmative action was conducted for secondary schools in 2017 which saw many assistant teachers promoted to deputies.
However, he wondered why teachers aged above 50 years were targeted for the transfer, arguing they have no morale to work hard and improve the expected learning outcomes.
In one instance for example, a teacher aged 58 years was transferred to serve as a deputy head in Kitui County.
