The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has advertised vacancies for 20,000 teacher interns to bridge the staffing gap in public schools across the country.
In an advertisement carried in the dailies, TSC said it would recruit 18,000 teacher interns for junior secondary schools (JSS) and another 2,000 for primary schools. Successful candidates attached to primary schools will be paid a Sh15,000 stipend monthly, while their JSS counterparts will get Sh20,000, the advertisement indicates.
To qualify to teach in JSS, teachers must hold a minimum of a diploma in education and a minimum mean grade of C+ and C+ in two subjects in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education or its equivalent. Candidates must also be registered with the commission. The commission has also encouraged teachers from technical and vocational education and training institutions to apply.
To qualify for primary school positions, a candidate should be a P1 certificate holder and registered with TSC. However, teachers with a diploma in primary teacher education (Competence-Based Curriculum) will have an added advantage, TSC said.
Successful candidates will be required to have accident insurance to cover personal risks during the internship period. Those deployed to junior secondary schools will be required to teach different areas of learning within the junior secondary curriculum, the advert states.
The commission indicated that successful candidates would be posted to a school in the counties in which they were interviewed or in any part of the country where there is a vacancy.
Kenya Primary Schools Head Teachers Association chairman Johnson Nzioka commended TSC for the move to recruit new teachers.
“We have a shortage of teachers especially in JSS and I have seen that most of the teachers are going to JSS. At least in a month or two, we will be relieved of the shortage we have been grappling with,” he said.
Last week, TSC chairman Jamleck Muturi announced the recruitment during the Kenya Secondary School Head Teachers Association conference in Mombasa last week. He said Sh4.6 billion had been set aside for recruitment, Sh1 billion for teacher development and Sh1.3 billion for capacity building of teachers on CBC.
The education sector received the highest share of the national government’s budget this financial year at Sh628.6 billion, up from Sh544.4 billion in the last financial year.
The newly recruited trainees will add to the 30,000 that were recruited last year.
“We consulted with the Ministry of Education and we were able to get correct data that we have 30,550 classes, so we’ve allocated one teacher per class. That means a school with one stream got one teacher, two streams got two teachers and five streams got five teachers,” Dr Muturi said last week. Despite this, he admitted that shortages remained.
Stakeholders in the education sector have complained that the number of teachers in JSS is inadequate as there are 12 compulsory subjects.
