The Teachers Service Commission Acting CEO Eveleen Mitei.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has warned that teacher shortage, fuelled by insufficient budgetary allocation, is bound to worsen in 2026 with the rollout of senior school, threatening to undermine the right to access quality basic education.
TSC’s concerns are captured in a report of the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee (CIOC) of the National Assembly. The report cautions that the current teacher shortage in public schools threatens the education standards in public schools.
Suba South MP Caroli Omondi.
The committee chaired by Suba South MP Caroli Omondi also decried imbalance in teacher distribution across the country, citing populous counties such as Kakamega among those facing excessive teacher workloads, leading to burnout.
“The committee noted that counties like Kakamega specifically demonstrate severely inadequate teacher distribution ratios,” reads the report, adding that the teacher distribution imbalance has seen certain constituencies experience “complete absence of teaching staff while others maintain adequate coverage”.
In the current financial year, TSC was allocated Sh378.2 billion out of which, Sh2.4 billion is for the recruitment of permanent teachers and Sh7.2 billion for the hiring of intern teachers for junior school.
“The commission faces significant challenges in fulfilling its mandate to recruit and employ registered teachers. The primary impediment is the inadequate budget allocation, which has resulted in critical teacher shortage,” the report states.
Lack of infrastructure
The international standards put the teacher-to-learner ratio at 1:25, meaning that the number of learners assigned to one teacher must not exceed 25. Kenya’s ratio varies by level, with recent figures showing pre-primary education at 1:38, primary at 1:46, junior school at 1:38 and secondary at 1:34. In some rural areas, ratios exceed 1:70.
The effects of the shortages on learning are compounded by the rising number of learners, new subjects and lack of adequate infrastructure such as classes and laboratories, with rural schools disproportionately affected.
Junior Secondary School teachers from Nairobi County demonstrate outside the Teachers Service Commission offices on May 13, 2024.
The report notes that the commission lacks qualified teachers in new learning areas, which include leather craft, sculpturing, jewellery and ornament making, media technology, marine and fisheries technology, general science and indigenous languages.
Documents presented to Parliament show that junior and senior schools require around 129,392 teachers.
Permanent teachers
The recent recruitment of permanent teachers and interns by the government to bridge the gap has not made the situation better, the report notes.
TSC is captured in the report stating that it has not achieved optimal teacher numbers since its establishment, highlighting the “persistent nature of this challenge”.
The report further notes that the teacher shortage crisis has been complicated by the irregular establishment of new schools “without corresponding budgetary provisions for teaching staff”.
“The proposed solutions include securing increased budgetary allocations from the National Assembly for teacher recruitment, strengthening coordination among stakeholders to ensure planned school establishment and implementing advisories to the national government for training teachers in new learning areas,” reads the document.
The report further indicates that TSC encounters challenges with training institutions admitting teacher trainees who lack the requisite qualifications for registration as teachers.
“This practice undermines the quality and standards expected in the teaching profession and creates complications in the registration process,” it states.
The report adds that teachers also face security threats from bandits, Al-Shabaab and hostile communities, “making assignments to these areas difficult to fill and maintain.”
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