Teachers’ headcount set to kick off in May
What you need to know:
- A pilot exercise will be conducted in May in 143 institutions in seven counties, which are Uasin Gishu, Homa Bay, Bungoma, Nyeri, Kilifi, Kitui and Garissa.
Commission will recruit graduate enumerators, who will verify documents, validate the secondary data and capture any other additional information.
Biometric registration of teachers will start in May, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) said Thursday.
In a meeting with key stakeholders at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in Nairobi, the commission got the support of teachers’ unions and education partners.
TSC deputy secretary Kennedy Mulunda said the registration will help to verify teacher distribution, utilisation and specialisation.
“It will also help us to update the teacher bio data and validate requirements in public schools and training colleges by size and learner enrolment,” he said.
Dr Mulunda said a pilot exercise will be conducted in May in 143 institutions in seven counties, which are Uasin Gishu, Homa Bay, Bungoma, Nyeri, Kilifi, Kitui and Garissa.
“The different schools will represent different geographical and sociocultural backgrounds,” he said.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) secretary-general Wilson Sossion said the listing will help in planning and addressing the biting shortage of tutors.
“This should have happened five years ago. It will help in improving quality of teaching and in budget allocation for the education sector,” said Mr Sossion.
The Knut boss, who said the union will mobilise its members to embrace the exercise, asked the TSC to link the data they will get with the new competency-based curriculum to study teacher preparedness.
The TSC director of Administration, Abraham Mummim, said the commission will recruit graduate enumerators, who will verify documents, validate the secondary data and capture any other additional information.
“The head of the institution shall also electronically endorse the data collected,” he said
Mr Mummim said TSC last conducted a teachers’ census in 1999.
As of January, statistics showed there were 99,381 secondary school teachers against 8,865 institutions and 217,281 tutors against 22,263 primary schools.
