Over 36,000 teachers are set for promotions starting next week in a race to boost education in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS), their employer has told Parliament.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is also set to employ an additional 450 new secondary school teachers, according to a schedule released yesterday.
Nancy Macharia, the TSC Chief Executive, told lawmakers that out of the 36,829 teachers targeted for promotion, 10,833 from primary schools will be promoted to work in JSS.
Promotions will be effected from Monday since the identified candidates have met the requisite qualifications for deployment.
While appearing before the National Assembly’s Education Committee, Macharia told MPs that TSC was currently mapping the teachers after they applied for promotion through its online platform.
“The mapping process of primary school teachers eligible to teach in junior secondary schools is a continuous process and verification of the mapped files is still ongoing to identify more teachers eligible to be posted to JSS,” she told legislators.
According to the commission, qualification for deployment to JSS include a Diploma in Education, Bachelor’s degree in Education, at least a C +plus mean grade in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE) examination or its equivalent and at least C Plus in the two teaching subjects at KCSE or its equivalent.
At university, one must have studied at least eight units in each of the two teaching subjects.
The deployment of the teachers will be over and above the 30,550 primary teachers who were distributed to JSS for Grade 7 earlier this year. During that phase, the commission allocated one teacher per class for all the Grade Seven classes in public schools countrywide.
