Top row from left: Trained teachers Kenneth Rono, Gilbert Kiprono, and Dennis Rugut. Bottom row: Winny Chepkorir (left), Joyce Chebet, Alice Cherop and Jackson Chirchir.
Trained but unemployed teachers in the country are increasingly feeling abandoned by the government as they are bypassed during recruitment.
Even worse, some are getting closer to their retirement age, yet their effort to attend interviews year in year out bears no fruit.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has failed to onboard the primary school teachers in the annual employment cycle, even with President William Ruto’s administration having employed more than 100,000 teachers in the last three years.
Elderly secondary school teachers who have not been employed. Stakeholders say most of them have taken up jobs in other sectors.
As a result of a skewed system of employment, younger primary school teachers have been employed while those in the sunset years of their careers are left out.
The teachers who are above 45 years are the most affected. Some have slipped into depression, while others have resorted to manual jobs for upkeep. Others have secured employment in private schools as non-permanent staff.
On average, private schools pay primary school teachers between Sh6,000 and Sh8,000, a far cry from the Sh26,255 entry salary paid by the TSC.
Unlike their colleagues employed by the TSC, the teachers in private schools are not paid during holidays, do not have a scheme of service, a pension fund, a medical cover, a burial and benevolent fund, and are not members of trade unions.
The affected teachers are waiting for the implementation of an affirmative action promised by President Ruto when he hosted 10,000 teachers at State House, Nairobi, on September 13, 2025.
The president’s directive followed an appeal by Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary-General Collins Oyuu. Mr Oyuu told the President that some of the elderly teachers had been bypassed in employment, with their students being employed before them, and that since their numbers were manageable, they should be employed by the TSC before their training became irrelevant as a result of the changing education system.
Kenya National Union of Teachers Secretary General Collins Oyuu speaks to the media in Nairobi on July 1, 2025.
The most affected counties are in the Rift Valley (with the South Rift counties of Bomet, Kericho, Nakuru being the worst hit), Western and Nyanza regions. They have teachers who are as old as 53 who are yet to be employed by TSC.
Joyce Chebet, a 46 years old teacher who has not been employed by the Teachers Service Commission
The teachers were trained under the 8-4-4 system of education, and may need retraining for the Competence Based Education (CBE) curriculum. Some of the teachers have since undergone re-training but have still not been employed by the TSC.
Mr Saddiq Hussein Mohamed, 51, who graduated from Garissa Teachers Training College in 1998 and later joined the University of Nairobi in 2009 is one of them.
“I applied for a teaching job, got an appointment letter but felt sick. I never reported to work, and that is how I lost the opportunity,” said Mr Mohamed, who hails from Garissa County. “I have repeatedly applied unsuccessfully for a teaching job. I am waiting for the president’s directive on affirmative action to see if I will be lucky, but age is fast catching up with me.”
Garissa, Wajir and Mandera counties suffered when non-local teachers exited en masse, citing insecurity caused by Al-Shabaab militants.
Another teacher, James Cherop, 52, from Baringo County should be drawing on more than two decades of classroom experience, shaping young minds and earning a living from the profession he trained for.
Instead, the father of seven from Baringo North Sub-County spends his days doing manual jobs in the neighbouring Nakuru County. He is struggling to provide for his family after waiting 24 years for a teaching opportunity that is yet to be realised.
In 2002, he graduated from High Ridge Teachers College in Nairobi with a Primary Teacher One (P1) certificate. Despite repeatedly applying for employment through the TSC and obtaining a registration number 23 years ago, he has never secured a job with the commission. Each unsuccessful application has pushed his dream further out of reach.
“I have even lost count of the number of times I have made applications,” he said. “I gave up and resorted to manual jobs in Nakuru County to provide for my family.”
At an age when he expected to be enjoying the fruits of his education, Mr Cherop finds himself struggling to make ends meet.
“I came to learn that you have to be well-connected to influential people or have enough money to secure a job. I had neither because I come from a very humble background. One day, I packed my bags, left the village and went to look for an alternative means of survival through manual work in Nakuru,” he said.
For him, the years spent waiting have left a particularly painful question: whether the education he struggled to acquire will ever translate into the career and livelihood he envisioned. His greatest fear is that he could reach retirement age without ever getting an opportunity to benefit from the profession he spent years preparing for.
“Despite the challenges we faced at home at that time, I worked very hard, knowing that education was an equaliser and would change the living standards of my people. I feel my education will go to waste if I am not employed now,” he said.
Mr Kenneth Rono, a 47-year-old teacher in Bomet County, said he resorted to casual jobs including weeding crops, plucking tea leaves, digging pit latrines and construction work to earn a living after failing to secure employment with TSC for 10 years.
Kenneth Rono, 47, from Bomet County, who has repeatedly applied for teaching positions at the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) over the years without success.
“I have headed a private school, but the best we could be paid was Sh7,000 a month, which is not enough to educate my children and cater for family needs. It is not practical to teach other children when your own have been sent home for fees, yet you cannot raise the money required,” he said.
“With my education, I get casual jobs from boda boda riders, my former students and anyone with a few shillings to spare. The question we are faced with is: why did we go to college in the first place? Was it worth the investment?” Asked Mr Rono, a father of four.
He said that since TSC has records of the unemployed and elderly teachers at the sub county and county level, it should not be difficult to prioritise them.
“You can imagine a situation where you are attending an interview with your former students, and they are employed and you are left out, year in, year out. It is very disturbing,” Mr Rono said, adding that he had attended interviews in Bomet, Narok and Nakuru counties.
Ms Winny Chepkorir graduated at Egoji Teachers Training College in 2015, but has for the last 11 years applied for employment in vain.
Winny Chepkorir, 45, a trained teacher, has not been employed by the Teachers Service Commission.
“TSC should simply devise a method of onboarding all the elderly trained teachers before employing younger ones. It is possible to clear all the elderly teachers who have clocked 45 years under affirmative action without affecting the county-allocated numbers in employment,” Ms Chepkorir said.
“The fastest way to deal with the issue permanently is to apply the ‘first out of college, first into employment’ rule. We would not be having the current situation where teachers have gone into depression for failure to secure jobs due to skewed manner of employment, external interference and favouritism,” she added.
In the TSC interview scorecard, the maximum score for those 50 years and above is 20 marks, 47-49 years, 15 marks, 44-46 years 10 marks and 43 years and below 05 marks.
Matters have been made worse by the fact that some Ministry of Education and TSC officials, alongside politicians and their agents, have been selling TSC employment letters for as little as Sh100,000 and as high as Sh450,000.
In Bomet, for example, four suspects, including a Ministry of education official and a TSC employee, have been arrested for obtaining money from teachers who were seeking employment in the pretext they would secure jobs for them. The case is ongoing.
The Teachers Service Commission Acting CEO Eveleen Mitei.
They are alleged to have been part of a cartel that had scammed teachers of over Sh100 million using fake appointment letters.
A police officer attached to a senior United Democratic Alliance (UDA) politician has not been arrested despite having been fingered as the main architect of the scam.
In Bomet, a couple of teachers over 40 wait patiently for employment. Mr Dennis Rugut, 47, graduated in 2009 while his wife Beatrice Chepngeno, 40, graduated in 2014. They have both not been employed by the commission despite repeatedly applying for jobs.
Dennis Rugut, a 46 years old teacher from Bomet County. He is yet to be employed by the Teachers Service Commission.
“We depend on private schools for employment and are struggling to educate our children and meet other family financial needs,” said Mr Rugut, a resident of Sotik.
Mr Samuel Ajina, a visually impaired teacher from Kisumu, rebuilt his life through education after losing his sight, only to find the doors of public employment closed to him. Mr Ajina, 45, abandoned his accounting career after a life-changing incident left him blind three years earlier.
Determined not to surrender to his circumstances, he enrolled at Asumbi Teachers College on December 4, 2018, to begin a new chapter in his life. Five years later, despite successfully completing his training and learning braille at Kibos School for the Blind, he is yet to secure employment with TSC.
Jackson Chirchir, 47, a teacher from Bomet County who remains unemployed despite repeatedly applying for advertised teaching positions at the Teachers Service Commission.
Mr Gilbert Kiprono Langat (45), Ms Alice Cherop Chumo (45), and Jackson Chirchir, all from Bomet County, are some of the teachers waiting for the president’s directive on affirmative action to be implemented.
Alice Cherop Chumo, 45 has not been employed by TSC despite applying for vacant positions over the years.
In Turkana County, union officials say most of those who missed out on employment have since moved into other occupations.
Dr Kenyaman Eriong’oa, the chairman of Knut’s Turkana branch, said about 50 ageing teachers had abandoned their hopes of joining the teaching profession and established themselves in alternative ventures.
Gilbert Kiprono, 45, a trained teacher who has repeatedly applied for employment by the Teachers Service Commission without success.
Knut SG Mr Oyuu and first national vice chairman Mr Malel Langa said there was a need for the government to deal with the issue of trained and ageing teachers.
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Reporting by Vitalis Kimutai, Manase Otsialo, Dominic Ombok, Florah Koech, Sammy Lutta and Evans Jaola
