TSC degree shock for new teachers

• Employer issues tough job rules and shuts door to diploma holders

Trainee teachers have to take an extra year at university to satisfy new requirements imposed by the Teachers Service Commission.

The TSC, the main employer of teachers, has told universities that they are teaching trainees irrelevant courses, causing a shortage of tutors in some subjects.

It has sent universities new conditions which they must meet for their graduates to get jobs.

Shortage of teachers

As a result, Fourth Year students in some universities are staying on for a fifth year in order to meet the new rules.

TSC boss Gabriel Lengoiboni said the courses now taught at university are to blame for a shortage of teachers in arts subjects.

From now on, the commission will hire graduates on the basis of the skills it needs, rather than the mere availability of jobless graduates.

“In order to utilise the available teacher numbers optimally and achieve equitable distribution, the commission reviewed its teacher recruitment policy from supply driven to demand driven. We also require that teachers seeking employment should have a minimum of two teaching subjects relevant to the current curriculum,” he said a in a circular to all public and private universities.

The move will lead to restructuring of departments in universities that train teachers to avoid missing out on employment opportunities by the government for their graduates.

And, in order to properly prepare trainees for a career in teaching, universities have been told to work closely with the TSC and the Ministries of Education and Higher Education.

To be employed, all graduates must have trained in at least two teaching subjects now in the secondary curriculum.

And Mr Lengoiboni had bad news for thousands of degree holders in Sociology, Agriculture, Forestry, Theology, Anthropology, Animal Husbandry, Meteorology and Natural Resources and others who either have obtained or were taking a post-graduate diploma (PGDE) in teaching in the hope of getting a job with the TSC: they will no longer be employed as teachers.

“They are not eligible for recruitment as teachers, irrespective of their having done post-graduate diploma in Education, since these fields are not relevant to the curriculum,” he said.

PGDE students, he said, should be admitted and trained only on the basis of the subjects they studied during their undergraduate degrees.

Mr Lengoiboni said the recent recruitment of teachers revealed a serious shortage in subjects now being avoided more by students and urged universities to step in. Subjects which have a shortfall are History, Christian Religious Education, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Studies.

“English language should be integrated with literature in English and be taken as two teaching subjects,” he explained.

He advised universities to guide students to take courses which are required in the job market. Last year, the TSC hired 14,000 teachers.

A check by the Nation revealed that universities had moved to comply with the new requirements.