The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will from next month recruit 8,707 teachers permanently to fill posts that have become vacant through natural attrition.
According to the commission's chief executive officer, Nancy Macharia, these will be replacements for teachers who have died, retired or resigned, rather than new positions within the teaching service.
Holders of the primary school teacher certificate, commonly known as P1, will compete for the 5,862 vacancies. The commission has not been recruiting primary school teachers for a long time, as most of the recruitment has been for junior and secondary schools. The government has stopped training teachers for the certificate course and replaced it with a diploma course.
There will be 2,824 vacancies for secondary school teachers and only 21 for junior schools. Ms Macharia said the TSC was also processing 5,690 applications it recently advertised for promotions and would soon advertise another 19,000 vacancies.
“Since 2022-2023 Financial Year, the commission has been able to employ 76,000 teachers to address the teacher shortage in Kenya. Out of the 76,000, some 20,000 have been engaged as interns while 56,000 teachers are serving under permanent and pensionable terms of service,” Ms Macharia said.
According to the commission, it had a total of 714,234 teachers on its register as of May 2024. More than 360,000 are permanently employed by the TSC, while 354,234 others are not.
Despite the huge number of unemployed teachers, schools at all levels have staffing gaps that the government has been unable to fill for years. Junior school has been the worst hit since it was introduced two years ago.
During his campaign for the 2022 presidential election, President William Ruto promised to employ 116,000 people within two years, but this has proved difficult due to budget constraints.
