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Teachers face licence fees in TSC reforms
FILE | NATION
Teachers at a past annual conference. They will now need to apply for a licence every three years.
What you need to know:
- Registration, similar to that of doctors, to be introduced in bid to block quacks and improve quality
Teachers are to be licensed in a new plan by their employer to improve education standards.
Licences will cost Sh1,000 and will be reviewed every three years.
The Teachers Service Commission, in a report that will form the basis of a Bill to transform it into a constitutional body, argues that the move will rid the profession of quacks.
TSC is one of the commissions that are to be elevated from a semi-autonomous government authority to a Constitutional Commission. A Bill to effect the transition is yet to be prepared by the government.
The report, prepared by its commissioners during a retreat at the Kenyatta University last week, states: “The Commission (will) strictly enforce the teacher registration requirement and regularly review teachers licences. The teaching license will be reviewed at a fee of Sh1,000 every three years to maintain standards.”
The move, the commission argues, will put teachers at the same level with other professions.
Doctors, engineers, lawyers and accountants are among professions that are licensed to operate in the country with misconduct or ineptitude leading to withdrawal of the licence.
Chapter 15 of the new Constitution has mandated TSC to review standards of education, train persons entering the teaching service and advise the government on matters of the profession.
Unlike in the current plan where teachers are registered centrally at the TSC headquarters, all training institutions will serve as agents in speeding up the process, and issuance of identification numbers.
Qualified teachers
“The commission shall enforce the registration process to establish a nominal roll of all trained and qualified teachers in the country for effective management,” the report notes.
Currently, the Commission cannot accurately account for the number of trained and qualified teachers since some teachers opt out of the profession. TSC said it has about 260,000 teachers in its payroll, but thousands from training institutions including universities, work in other sectors.
Cases of teachers entering classrooms without schemes of work and lesson plans will be a thing of the past as the report indicates that TSC is to intensify its presence in the new devolved structures.
In the new structures, the Commission will delegate teacher management functions that are currently performed by agents such as provincial and district education officers, and school boards of governors.
“This is to align the structures with the new arrangements that place the county as the focal point of decentralised service delivery,” the report says.
Key functions of the commission such as recruitment, deployment, discipline and termination of service for the teachers shall be devolved to the 47 counties.
The counties will be mandated to have more operational autonomy in the recruitment process in advertising the positions, short-listing and interviewing the candidates.
On the other hand, the headquarters currently based in Upper Hill, Nairobi, will be responsible for providing oversight and issue appointment letters to maintain integrity in the process.
The transfer and promotion of teachers shall be done by the Teacher Management County Directors, who will also receive applications and interview eligible candidates.
But the Commission has been stripped of its powers to host the Teachers Service Remuneration Committee. The responsibility to determine and harmonise the salary structures of public servants now rests with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission where TSC shall only appoint one officer to represent it.
The law under which teachers now work, the TSC Act, is to be repealed and a team is to be appointed to study it so as to make it compliant with the new Constitution.
There is reported to be jostling for top positions in the new-look TSC. Currently, TSC consists of 24 commissioners, including the chairman, but the new Constitution demands that it should be composed of at least three but not more than nine commissioners.
Thus, under the new laws, it has to sack at least 16 commissioners although the new laws do not give a timetable for this.
At the same time, the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) has announced plans to carry out radical reforms to conform with the requirements of the new constitutional dispensation.
The reforms include scrapping of the positions of provincial councils in the eight provinces.
The Knut secretary-general, Mr Lawrence Majali, said that since provinces had been abolished under the new dispensation, there is no need for the officials.
He made the revelation in Gingo, Suba District, where he led top Knut officials during the burial of Paul Omondi Onyonyi.
Additional report by Maurice Kaluoch
