Teachers seeking employment have a day to apply

Qualified teachers have until the end of Friday to submit their applications for employment by the government.

The exercise that will see more than 7,000 teachers recruited started on 10 days ago and interviews are set to start next week.

The Teachers Service commission (TSC) Chief executive officer Nancy Macharia said teachers who will be recruited will be deployed to serve in stations in any part of the country and not necessarily in the County where they are recruited.

The move to deploy teachers outside their home county is aimed to address the problem of delocalization of schools.

And those who served on contract during a national strike in September last year will have an edge over others.

The relief teachers will get additional six marks for the service they offered when they were hired to assist during the strike that had been called by Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) to push for a pay increase.

During the period more than 12, 000 out of the targeted 70,000 relief teachers were hired to minimize disruption of learning in public schools.

In the recruitment guidelines released by TSC, candidates who graduated earlier and those who are 40 years and above will also get more scores during the interviews.

Mrs Macharia said candidates with distinction will earn 37 marks while those with a pass will get seven marks.

“Those who graduated in 2003 or before will get 37 marks while those who graduated in 2014 will get four marks,” said Mrs Macharia.

Candidates aged 40 years and above will get the highest marks at 20 while those aged 26 years and below will get four marks.

The recruitment is set to address the shortage of teachers in the country which stands at 85,000.

A total of 1,225 teachers will be employed to teach in secondary schools while 3,775 will be for primary schools.

A further 2,157 teachers will be recruited to replace those who have exited the service through natural attrition with 1,618 posts for Primary schools and 539 teachers for post primary learning institutions.

Primary school applicants must be holders of P1 certificate while those for post Primary institutions must be holders of a minimum of Diploma in Education Certificate.
Mrs Macharia said TSC will only deal with its County Selection Panels and Boards of Management in the exercise warning that individual application to the Commission will not be considered.

“Successful applicants must not fill employment forms in more than one station as this will lead to disqualification,” warned Mrs Macharia.

She said preference will be given to applicants who have not previously been employed by the Commission.

“Any fraudulent activity should be reported to the nearest police station, TSC County Directors, Staffing Officers or to TSC headquarters,” said the CEO.

In Primary schools the exercise will be conducted by the county selection panel for ratification and onward transmission to the TSC headquarters.

“The Selection Panel will be required to exercise the highest degree of transparency and accountability as stipulated in the Public Officer Ethics Act (2003),” said Mrs Macharia.

She said all applicants must be registered teachers as per section 23(1) of Teachers Service Commission ACT 2012.

“Those without registration certificates must attach a printout of duly completed application form/payment receipt as evidence of application for registration,” said Mrs Macharia.

She said the sub-county merit panel chaired by the TSC Sub-County Director will be required to submit the registration list of all applicants in the sub county, Sub county Merit list, Summary of complaints raised and Minutes of the Sub County merit panel duly signed by the Chairperson and Secretary.

The TSC County Director will be required to convene a County selection panel to ratify sub county merit lists and compile the County merit list for onward transmission to the TSC Headquarters within the stipulated deadline.