- Hillary Muhalya examines Uganda’s new teacher law as Kenya considers similar professional-development reforms.
- Uganda has strengthened teacher licensing, internships and continuous professional development under a new legal framework.
- Kenya’s pending reforms could similarly reshape teacher preparation before and throughout educators’ professional careers.
Uganda is moving to fundamentally change how teachers are trained, licensed and developed — a reform that is likely to attract close attention in Kenya as Nairobi pushes its own plans to overhaul teacher preparation.
At the centre of Uganda’s changes is a new legal framework aimed at professionalising teaching, strengthening teacher registration and licensing, and making continuous professional development a more structured part of a teacher’s career.
Uganda’s Parliament passed the National Teachers Bill, 2024, in April 2026. It subsequently became the National Teachers Act, 2026, after receiving presidential assent and being published in June.
The reforms establish a clearer professional framework for teachers, including registration and licensing, teacher internship programmes and continuous professional development.
The reforms signal a shift away from viewing teacher training as something that ends when a trainee graduates.
Instead, professional learning is being positioned as a continuous process.
That is where Uganda’s reforms become particularly relevant to Kenya.
Kenya is itself considering major changes to teacher preparation through the Pre-Service Education and In-Service Training Bill, 2026, which seeks to establish a stronger legal framework for preparing teachers before they enter classrooms and developing them after recruitment.
The Bill had its First Reading in the National Assembly in August and is currently undergoing public participation as part of a package of education reform Bills.
The Kenyan debate comes at a critical moment.
The country is implementing competency-based education while schools are dealing with new expectations around learner-centred teaching, digital learning, assessment, inclusion and skills development.
This means the teacher standing in front of a classroom today is expected to do considerably more than deliver a syllabus.
The question increasingly being asked is whether the systems preparing teachers are changing fast enough to match those expectations.
Uganda has responded by strengthening its institutional approach to teacher education through the Uganda National Institute for Teacher Education (UNITE).
UNITE was established in July 2024 to coordinate and provide teacher education from initial preparation through postgraduate training, while also supporting in-service training and continuous professional development.
The model puts teacher preparation and professional growth within a more connected framework.
Kenya considering its own restructuring
For Kenya, the comparison is significant — but the two countries are not following identical paths.
Kenya’s proposed reforms are still subject to legislative scrutiny and public participation. Stakeholders therefore have an opportunity to debate what teacher preparation should look like before the new framework becomes law.
The proposed legislation also seeks to establish the Kenya Teachers Training College and the Kenya School of Education, with the latter responsible for professional in-service training programmes for teachers and education managers.
That debate could prove more consequential than the question of academic qualifications alone.
A teacher may possess a degree, diploma or other recognised qualification, but classroom effectiveness also depends on pedagogical skills, practical preparation, subject knowledge, mentorship and the ability to respond to changing learner needs.
The emerging regional conversation is therefore shifting from “What qualification does a teacher have?” to a broader question: “How well is the education system preparing that teacher to teach?”
For Kenya, this is particularly important as the country continues to reorganise basic education and strengthen competency-based learning.
Teacher preparation will determine whether those reforms remain policy documents or translate into meaningful changes inside classrooms.
Training beyond initial qualifications
Uganda’s reforms have therefore opened a wider East African conversation about the teaching profession.
Kenya now has its own opportunity to decide how far it wants to go — and whether its next generation of teacher training will be designed around certificates and qualifications alone, or around the complete professional journey of a teacher.
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Ultimately, the success of education reform will be measured not by the number of policies passed, but by what happens when a trained teacher walks into a classroom and begins teaching.
By Hillary Muhalya
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