Knut and TSC row is battle of egos, not substance

The collapse of a crucial meeting meant to resolve long-drawn disputes between teachers and their employer has stoked anxiety within the education sector just weeks to the start of national examinations.

The deadlock has also all but buried the underlying issues that underpin the eternally troubled relationship between the Kenya National Union of Teachers and the Teachers Service Commission.

On the agenda at the Naivasha meeting was policies recently introduced by the TSC but which have rattled a teaching fraternity that is not used to professional convulsions.

The policies touch on delocalisation, which means the transfer of head teachers and deputies from their counties of birth, the introduction of performance appraisals, new career progression guidelines and professional development programmes.

The retreat, scheduled to last a week, fell apart on the third day after both parties differed on all the issues while Knut fell short of issuing a strike notice.

TRANSFERS

Yet a keen look at the policies portrays Knut as oddly out of touch with modern career management tools and the TSC as progressive albeit in an unnecessarily aggressive manner.

The most contentious issue has been the massive transfer of teachers across the country to stop a tendency by school managers to be too localised, insular and rustic.

In the words of TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia, the TSC was after “achieving a national outlook in the management of schools and engendering an appreciation of the country’s various cultures".

While teacher transfers have always been a routine affair since 1967 when the TSC was formed, Knut has vehemently opposed the delocalisation policy, terming the transfers punitive, unnecessary and disruptive to education.

In a sense, the union is right to the extent the transfers can be punishing to teachers approaching retirement, those unable to work in certain areas due to health conditions, and those unwilling to work hundreds of kilometres away from their families.

DEMAND

So far, 1,065 head teachers and their deputies, from both primary and secondary schools, have been moved away from their counties since last year and most have settled down.

In addition, the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet), which brings together secondary and college teachers — the bulk of whom the policy targets — says it sees no problem with the transfers.

At face value, the transfers policy comes across as a non-issue as long as the TSC is giving individual teachers opposed to being moved a hearing and is not just herding them to faraway counties.

“Over the years, the commission has dealt with thousands of individual cases where married teachers have applied to be posted to the same area.

It is, however, important to note that like other jobs in the public sector, employment and assignment of teachers is demand-driven.

As a result, teachers can only be posted where their services are required.

VOTES

Critically, all transfer cases are dealt with on "individual merit and circumstances, and upon application", TSC Head of Communications Kihumba Kamotho says.

Yet it is this very policy that led to the collapse of the Naivasha talks after Knut insisted the transfer of 85 of its officials be revoked as a precondition to the continuation of the talks, exposing an egotistic and self-preservation bent to the controversy.

Worried that the union is being emasculated through dispersing its officials around the country, Knut boss Wilson Sossion saw an opportunity to get back at the TSC using the whole delocalisation rule as his trump card.

Many of the union’s branch chairpersons, assistant secretaries and treasurers are ordinary teachers and some are principals in counties where they were elected.

Knut may be justified in feeling the transfer of these officials could destabilise it but it does not make sense to have a union official working as a head teacher supervising those who elected him to office.

APPRAISAL

It would be unrealistic to expect a principal or deputy to effectively supervise, reprimand or sanction a teacher whose vote he will need at some point.

In any case, managers in both private and public organisations are not unionisable.

The hullabaloo over the transfers is clearly a storm in a tea cup and is not worth the national attention that Knut thinks it should.

The performance, appraisal and development system introduced to measure productivity in schools has invited fury among teachers, mainly because it is novel and individualised.

Although measuring productivity is routine in private organisations globally, they are rare in the public service.

The collective bargaining agreement that Knut, Kuppet and TSC signed for 2017 to 2021 recognises it as a regular performance-measuring tool.

It is also in the Code of Regulations for Teachers.

SOFT POWER

In a nutshell, the system is meant to ease supervision of teachers, check cases of teacher absenteeism and help keep up to date learner progress records, et cetera.

It also measures many non-core extra-curricula activities that are not directly linked to learning outcomes.

At face value, it is good for learners and teachers. The problem is that it is being implemented in a rather haphazard and inflexible manner making it rather unpopular.

It reduces teachers to clerical officers filling countless forms every month and uploading them to a TSC website.

The system should be made more efficient, easy and less infrequent.

While the TSC is already reviewing the system following numerous complaints, it ought to explain the philosophy behind it to the teachers to convince them to buy into it rather than pushing it down their throats.

PROMOTION

Another issue that has provoked outrage among teachers and that was on the agenda of the Naivasha meeting is the new career progression guidelines that tend to disparage or ignore higher education qualifications during promotions.

In the last decade, thousands of teachers have enrolled in universities for degrees, masters and even doctorates, hoping to be pushed to the next career grade.

To their grief, they have realised these new certificates do not count for much in promotions.

It has been the unions’ position that those who have earned higher degrees should automatically be promoted, while TSC has insisted that new appointments can only be based on vacancies and not academic papers.

Notably, it is the TSC that spawned the rush for degrees because it has since 2006 been promoting teachers purely based on credentialism.

Encouraged by the trend, hundreds of teachers enrolled for diplomas in Early Childhood Education (ECD) and Bachelors in Education degrees.

VACANCIES

However, it soon became clear the system was untenable when it was realised that there was no justification to promote those with ECD diplomas to primary schools because their qualifications are essentially only useful in pre-school institutions.

Still, some teachers who obtained degrees did not even have the minimum qualifications to undertake university education and, although they graduated, they could not handle the secondary school curriculum.

By 2013, the promotions had created a big mess in schools and exhausted the vacancies for various grades.

In essence, teachers could not be appointed to non-existent vacancies, the promotions were stopped, and the TSC made it clear that only vacancies could dictate new appointments.

This made sense if, for example, the requirement for teaching in a primary school is the P1 certificate, it would not be justifiable to promote someone simply because they have a degree because it is not required in primary schools.

EXAMS

However, the TSC ought to be transparent about its job grades, the matching qualifications and the existing vacancies through regular updates.

This would help ameliorate the frustrations of teachers who invest thousands of shillings on higher qualifications only to be forced back to their old jobs and old salaries.

Clearly, the issues Knut and the TSC have so bitterly disagreed on can be solved quietly and amicably without having to put the country through an anxious moment just when national examinations are about to start.

Knut must be open-minded and the TSC has to drop its hardline, aggressive stand when it makes policy changes.

The TSC has a poor record of keeping an amicable relationship with its employees.

RELATION

While it should cut the image of the protector and caregiver for teachers, it upholds a hostile, aggressive and acrimonious liaison with its subjects, breeding mistrust and suspicion.

The relationship between the commission and teachers is like that of a prison warder and a prisoner.

According to a head teacher in a national school who declined to be named, TSC officials are disrespectful to teachers and this has been the case through the years.

Like their union officials, teachers view every pronouncement or policy statement by the TSC as meant to hurt or punish them.

Mrs Macharia and her Jogoo House colleagues, while being firm and determined, have to adopt a more open-door management style and implement new policies through persuasion rather than arm-twisting, intimidation and threats of dismissal.