Teachers Service Commission, (TSC) has dispatched a team of technical officers to various counties across the county that are marked as having excess teachers.
The visited counties are said to have more teachers yet in reality, some schools within them are acutely understaffed hence need for teacher rationalization.
Teacher rationalization is the process of shifting surplus teachers to staff deficient schools. The process is decentralized to counties for secondary and sub counties for primary and junior schools.
TSC county and sub county directors are mandated to ensure that teachers are balanced in schools for effective curriculum implementation.
TSC head office decision to dispatch officers to unearth teacher distribution anomalies tend to display management gaps on the part of the county and sub county directors.
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Education News is privy to information that teachers have regularly compromised TSC officers in order to be deployed and transferred to schools of their wish. The vice has led to many struggling and interior schools get shunned by teachers.
” My school has only 4 teachers employed by the commission despite a learner population of 326.Many teachers avoid being posted here because they say it is a remote area,” said John a head teacher in a county that has been marked by TSC as overstaffed by over 1000 teachers.
John further says that he has visited the sub county office for attention to no avail. He claims that teachers are yearly recruited but the TSC sub county Director has at every attempt failed to consider his school. The situation has forced the head teacher to convince the school to employ teachers.
The situation in most sub counties in western, Rift Valley, Central and Coast regions is wanting as there’s glaring distribution of teachers. Some sub county Directors who spoke to Education News on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals attributed staffing inequalities in schools to politicians.
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“We are always under duress to deploy and transfer teachers as per the demands of the members of parliament and senior government officers”, said one of TSC sub county Director.
Relatives and friends of the power wielders are said to be given schools within major towns, cities and municipalities as well as near tarmac roads. In counties covered with hardship allowance, teachers are said to use all the unorthodox strategies to be given schools.
“It is the dream of every teacher in Kericho to work in either Soin sigowet,Kericho municipality or along the main tarmac roads,” said one teacher whose attempt to get transferred to either hardship area or within the municipality has hit snag after rounds of attempts.
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Parents association officials reached for comments squarely blamed TSC offices for causing staff shortages in schools. “Why is it rare to hear of security apparatus shortages in police posts across the country yet teachers are more than police officers? Our local TSC collude with teachers to deny our children quality education,” claimed Aaron from central Kenya.
They petitioned TSC head office to crack whip on its officers who fail to carry out teacher rationalization.
All eyes are now on TSC’s team as it combs counties with staffing queries. It is the hope of stakeholders in the education sector that with the ongoing fact finding, the shunned and teacher condemned schools will get teachers to bolster and effect sound curriculum implementation.
By Naboth Murunga.
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