15,000 senior teachers set for promotions, pay rise

Up to 15,226 teachers have reason to celebrate an early Christmas after the Teachers Service Commission announced promotion vacancies for deputy principals, senior lecturers, senior masters, curriculum support officers, head teachers and deputy head teachers.

According to TSC chief executive Nancy Macharia, there are 6,680 senior master IV positions that are vacant, 2,111 primary school head teachers jobs and 1,765 deputy head teacher II posts.

Additionally, there are 1,590 openings for teachers aspiring to the position of deputy principal III, 1,096 for deputy principal II and 1,341 for deputy principal I.

Other vacancies include curriculum support officer II with 209 openings, senior master IV (350) and senior lecturer IV (45). The new positions are in accordance with the teachers’ Career Progression Guidelines.

Qualified teachers have until January 13, 2021 to submit their applications online. They will need to present their letters of appointment to the current grades during the interviews, the letter of appointment or deployment to the current responsibility and certificates of good conduct from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

Compliance certificates

Clearance by Higher Education Loans Board, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and a credit reference bureau is mandatory as well as compliance certificates from the Kenya Revenue Authority.

“For duties and responsibilities of the advertised posts, applicants should refer to the Career Progression Guidelines For Teachers (2018), available on the TSC Website,” Mrs Macharia said.

The TSC has been using the contentious guidelines to promote teachers, leaving out those that belong to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) after a court ruling in July that union members be promoted following the Schemes of Service and Code of Regulations for Teachers.

This has made thousands of teachers quit Knut so as to better their career prospects, leaving the giant union greatly weakened.

Meanwhile, the commission has released the timetable for interviews for the 6,674 positions of teacher interns that were advertised at the beginning of the month.

The selection will be conducted countrywide from Monday next week and will be concluded the following week, in time for reopening of schools after a nine-month closure caused by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The newly recruited interns will be expected to report to school on January 11 to ease the burden on teachers who, in some cases, will have to split classes or teach in shifts in order to observe social distancing.

The addition of the 6,674 interns to the teaching force is part of the economic stimulus package announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta in May to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis in schools.

1,998 interns

Primary schools will get 1,998 interns, while 4,676 will be engaged to teach in secondary schools. The number is, however, lower than the 12,000 the commission had preferred to engage.

According to the TSC schedule, merit lists were developed and shared with the county directors between Tuesday and Wednesday last week. This was after the December 14 deadline for the applications that were done online.

There is expected to be a staffing crisis in schools in January as teachers who are 58 years and above and those with underlying medical conditions have been advised to work from home since they are considered vulnerable to infection by the coronavirus.

The commission says that there are 16,645 teachers who are in the risky age bracket — 14,333 of these are in primary schools while 2,651 are in secondary schools. About 480 will retire at the end of the year.

The TSC has increased the stipend previously paid to the interns from Sh10,000 to Sh15,000 for those serving in primary schools while those in secondary schools will receive Sh20,000, up from 15,000, before statutory deductions.

The commission in September gave teachers serving on internship an advantage of 10 percentage marks during its last recruitment of teachers on permanent and pensionable terms.

Although the TSC has insisted that the internship programme is meant for mentorship of teachers entering the profession, it has come in handy to plug serious staffing gaps in public schools.

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