400,000 Teachers Still Jobless as TSC Plans to Recruit 20,000 for JSS.
As learners prepare to join Grade 9 in January 2025, they will face several challenges, including teacher shortages despite ongoing government efforts to address these issues.
Junior schools, particularly those in Grade 7, 8, and 9, suffer from a significant shortage of teachers. The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has highlighted this as the most understaffed segment in the education system, with an insufficient number of teachers possessing the necessary skills.
TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia informed the National Assembly Education Committee that the commission has secured funding to recruit 20,000 additional teachers on contract for junior schools.
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This will bring the total number of teachers in these schools to 76,928, spread across 20,000 schools.
However, this recruitment effort will only add an average of one teacher per school, a stark contrast to the 216,000 teachers serving in primary schools and 125,000 in secondary schools, where students will only be in Forms 2, 3, and 4 next year.
Macharia admitted that issues related to staffing in junior secondary schools (JSS) remain unresolved.
She added that over 400,000 teachers are unemployed, and promised to provide detailed data on the distribution of teachers across subjects in a future session.
Macharia emphasized that a significant problem lies in the availability of science teachers, noting that arts graduates outnumber those qualified to teach science.
Efforts to mitigate the teacher shortage
At a separate event, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba outlined efforts to mitigate the teacher shortage through retooling existing staff.
He noted that the government plans to address the 20,000-teacher deficit by January 2025.
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In regions where there are fewer teachers than needed, the ministry is retraining unqualified teachers to prepare them for teaching Grade 9.
Ogamba also assured that all teachers who have been working on contract since last year will be permanently employed.
400,000 Teachers Still Jobless as TSC Plans to Recruit 20,000 for JSS
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