10,000 new school teachers to be hired

An additional 10,000 new teachers will be recruited for public schools in the next financial year to address a biting shortage under a new government plan.

According to the report detailing resource requirements in the education sector, the Teachers Service Commission and the Kenya National Union of Teachers agreed that the agency recruits more staff in the next financial year.

The deal, according to the Education Sector Report of 2012, was part of the back-to-work agreement that allowed teachers to resume classes following a strike last year.

The report recommends that 10,000 teachers be recruited every year over the next five years to address the deficit, worsened by the recently extended long term dates and an increasing enrolment arising from the free learning programmes.

“To alleviate the shortages currently being experienced, an additional 10,000 teachers (should) be recruited every year for the next five years,” says the report.

But Knut chairman Wilson Sossion rejected the government plan, saying the union had demanded that 20,000 teachers be employed annually.

He said that while union had agreed that more teachers be recruited, consensus was never reached on the number.

Currently, there are 19,360 primary schools and 6,178 post-primary institutions that require a total of 333,480 teachers.

However, the institutions only have 263,060 teachers, creating a shortage of 70,420 teachers.

Of these, 37,431 are required in primary schools while 33,079 are needed in post-primary institutions, according to the report.

Schools in rural areas, arid and semi-arid regions suffer a greater shortage than those in urban areas.

Mr Sossion faulted the report’s contents, saying that other than the conversion of contract teachers to permanent terms and recruitment of 5,000 fresh staff in January, there had not been any mention of the number to be recruited next year, he said.

“We will not change our demand that 20,000 teachers be recruited,” he said.

Breach of contract

“It is a breach of our contract for the government to give an impression that we had agreed on a smaller number of teachers”.

According to the report, the number of teachers needed in public schools is rising.

“The shortage is expected to worsen given that education has become a basic right for every school going child under the new Constitution,” the report says.

Although the TSC has been making requests to the Treasury to be allowed to employ more teachers, says the report, “the requirement to keep recurrent expenditure under check has limited the number of teachers that can be recruited”.

“This has made understaffing to continue growing at an alarming rate.”

According to the report, TSC has a deficit in staff salaries amounting to Sh11.1 billion.

The deficit was partly created by the unplanned for conversion of 18,060 contract teachers to permanent terms of employment, which raised the pay of the workers.

Early this year, the TSC also recruited 5,000 teachers at a cost of Sh900 million following an agreement with Knut.

If a further 10,000 teachers are recruited in the new financial year, then the government will require Sh3.6 billion for their salaries.

Additionally, the TSC’s salary bill grows by Sh2.2 billion every year.
According to the document, the commission will require Sh718 million to institute its operations in counties.
The Education Sector Medium Term Expenditure Framework 2012/13–2014/15 Report proposes that the government should facilitate the implementation of the recommendations of the staffing norms study.
The study proposed that the distribution of teachers across regions be based on the pupil-teacher ratio of 45:1 for high potential areas.
In low potential areas like rural and arid and semi-arid areas, a teacher should handle 25 pupils.
“The government’s initiative to hire more teachers will go a long way in addressing gaps caused by absenteeism and long term shortages,” the report said.
According to the report, the government had implemented the accelerated admission to public universities to help reduce the period KCSE qualifiers wait before joining college.
This was driven by the need to regularise the admission of students ahead of the admission of the 2014 student cohort — the first FPE group to clear Form Four.
The number of students who will be seeking admission then will double from the 2011 figure of 97,000 to about 150,000.
And the cost implication is an additional Sh7.84 billion.