TSC: 76,928 Teachers Hired for Junior Secondary Schools Since 2022.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has confirmed that 76,928 teachers have been recruited since 2022 to manage junior secondary school (JSS) classes.
TSC Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Nancy Macharia, stated that this figure accounts for 51.5% of the total required teaching workforce. According to the Commission, 149,350 teachers are necessary to effectively handle Grades 7, 8, and 9.
Among those employed are 39,550 JSS teachers who were initially recruited as interns but have since been transitioned to permanent and pensionable terms. Additionally, 8,378 P1 teachers were redeployed to JSS within the past two years, along with 9,000 junior secondary teachers directly recruited on permanent and pensionable contracts.
The 20,000 JSS intern teachers hired in January this year at a cost of Ksh 4.8 billion are also included in this tally. The recruitment process prioritized teachers with a science background due to a shortage of science and technical subject teachers in many junior secondary schools.
On January 31st, TSC initiated the retooling of JSS intern teachers in preparation for the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) and Competency-Based Assessment (CBA). Since April 2019, the Commission has retooled 229,292 teachers on CBC and CBA, with 60,642 JSS teachers undergoing training between May 2023 and November 2024.
Despite these efforts, data revealed that the current teacher-to-class ratio in JSS stands at 1:1. In response, TSC plans to deploy more P1 teachers to support Grade 7, 8, and 9 learners. To address the shortage, an additional 6,000 P1 teachers will be deployed in February this year, with the online application process for their deployment already in progress.
Deployment of P1 Teachers and Policy Concerns
The Commission has been deploying P1 teachers since 2019 as a promotion strategy following persistent complaints from primary school teachers about career stagnation.
Between 2019 and 2021, 1,000 P1 teachers were deployed each year to secondary schools. From 2022 to 2024, approximately 8,378 teachers were assigned to JSS to support the first cohorts of the CBC.
Meanwhile, officials from the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) have urged TSC to reconsider its stringent academic requirements for P1 teacher deployment to JSS. The union proposed that instead of enforcing rigid qualification criteria, TSC should focus on retooling PTE teachers to equip them for teaching Grades 7, 8, and 9.
Under the current deployment criteria, TSC mandates that practicing P1 teachers must possess a degree in a secondary education option, achieve a minimum of C+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), and attain at least a C+ in two teaching subjects.
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This policy has drawn criticism, with stakeholders arguing that P1 teachers are well-equipped to teach specialized subjects such as Music, Art and Craft, and Physical Education, which JSS teachers are currently struggling to handle.
The upcoming deployment of 6,000 primary school teachers will be guided by subject combinations, commonly referred to as subject clusters, ensuring that the most suitable candidates are assigned to areas of need within JSS.
TSC: 76,928 Teachers Hired for Junior Secondary Schools Since 2022
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