Teachers appraisals to begin despite union's protest

Education Cabinet Secretary Dr Fred Matiang'i enjoys the company of Keveye Girls High school in Vihiga County on February 25, 2016. Appraisal targeting 298,000 teachers will be concluded by June and will determine any salary increase for teachers. PHOTO | TOM OTIENO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The evaluation will be conducted in all the 47 counties in collaboration with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Kenya, which is a consulting partner for the teaching service sector.
  • SRC has been opposed to any salary increase for teachers insisting that it should only be done after evaluation of their job has been completed.

Teachers will from Monday be subjected to job evaluation by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) which aims to determine the true worth of their work in the public service.

The evaluation will be conducted in all the 47 counties in collaboration with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Kenya, which is a consulting partner for the teaching service sector.

“The teaching job will be evaluated and a grading system developed. The remuneration for each grade shall be determined by the pay structure developed through a salary benchmarking exercise,” said SRC Vice-chairman Daniel Ogutu.

He said the exercise that is targeting 298,000 teachers will be concluded by June and will determine any salary increase for teachers.

SRC has been opposed to any salary increase for teachers insisting that it should only be done after evaluation of their job has been completed.

The teachers have been pushing for a 50-60 per cent salary increase, which the government has declined insisting that any increase must be done on the advice of SRC on the basic point of equal pay for equal work. 

“There have been arguments that teachers job is the same as designed and cannot be evaluated. That is not correct. Since 1969, the teaching service has gone through many transformation,” said Mr Ogutu.

He said schools have grown in terms of infrastructure and student’s population hence the need to recognise the work done by teachers.

KNUT'S CONCERNS
Already more than 100 TSC county directors have been sensitised on the evaluation with special focus on issues that affect the teaching service jobs discussed including school size, working environment, teaching materials, responsibilities, special education, financial responsibility, and quantity of work.

Meanwhile, the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) wants the teachers employer to release a report of a pilot project on proposed teacher appraisal and performance contracting.

Knut Secretary-General Wilson Sossion said even though it participated in the benchmarking exercise in Britain, the actual findings and report of the exercise have never been compiled and subjected to a policy meeting.

“It is known that, despite the absence of action, TSC went ahead to pilot the same in two counties,” he said, adding that the union has received complains from members about that exercise.

The union insists that the constitutional requirement of public participation in policy issues will not be met if the teachers unions are not involved.

The union maintains that the benchmarked country discouraged not only numerical targets but introduced additional paperwork.

Knut says that the paperwork led to the collapse of the appraisals in various countries as teachers abandoned the actual classroom teaching to focus on recording maintenance to achieve personalised career growth ignoring the learners.