By Hezron Roy
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will get a massive Ksh 300.88 billion from the education sector budget in the 2023/2024 Financial Year (FY), making it the highest recipient of the taxpayer’s funding cutting across all government agencies and departments.
This will be an increase of Ksh3.48 billion from the current budget.
According to the Draft 2023 Budget Policy Statement, Ksh 300.08 billion will go to current expenditure while Ksh799 million will cover capital expenditure.
A total of Ksh292 billion will be directed to teacher resource management, where current expenditures have been allocated a total of Ksh291.2 billion, as capital expenditure gets Ksh718 million.
Governance and Standards on the other hand will be allocated a total of Ksh1.17 billion in form of current expenditure. Ksh7.70 billion will cater for its general administration, planning and support services.
National Treasury and Economic Planning Cabinet Secretary (CS) Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u notes that in order to increase the teacher to learner ratio in primary and secondary schools, the government has provided resources to the TSC to recruit 30,000 teachers.
During the release of 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in January 2023, TSC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Nancy Macharia said they want the new recruits to be on the Commission’s payroll on January 30, 2023, the same day the Junior Secondary School (JSS) learners will report to their respective schools.
“I thank all the stakeholders who have worked round the clock to ensure we professionally conduct the interviews in the biggest teacher recruitment since the late 1990s. I assure the country that this process has been conducted independently and professionally while complying with the values and principles of the Constitution,” said Dr. Macharia.
According to TSC, all the teachers who will be recruited will be put on a retooling regime that will ensure they adequately attend to JSS learners.
Already it has trained 2,376 master trainers ahead of the retooling exercise of all the new teachers and others currently teaching in secondary schools – with the Commission targeting to train 90,000 teachers between January and April 2023.
In December last year, teachers, through their Unions, made a raft of demands; key among them being re-negotiations of the 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to include in a monetary element effective from this year 2023.
In its resolutions during the 62nd Annual Delegates’ Conference, the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) was mandated to push for a 60 per cent pay increment.
If they have their way, the increment would see the highest paid teacher at Grade D5 take home Ksh252,249.60 up from Ksh157,656. The lowest paid will earn Ksh43,192 up from Ksh27,196.
In July 2021, teacher Unions signed a non-monetary CBA with the TSC.
Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers’ (KUPPET) Secretary-General Akelo Misori, who was among the guests, vowed to work with KNUT to push for better working conditions.
