Teachers in acting capacities to reap big from TSC
All school heads in acting capacity will be smiling soon as the teacher service commission will start paying them compensation for the extra work.
The Employment Act of 2007 requires an employer to pay their employees equal remuneration for work of equal value.
School heads in acting capacity will start earning a monthly special duty allowance for the period they are in acting capacity.
TSC will pay the Teachers as from July 2024 after the budget. In a presentation to the Education Committee in parliament one month ago, the TSC indicated that it had finalised negotiations with SRC and is exploring a budget line to pay such teachers a special duty allowance.
The new plan will benefit 3,359 schools running with no leadership as they lack a substantive school head, according to data by the Presidential Working Party on Education reforms.
There are a total of 1,918 primary schools without head teachers and 1,441 secondary schools without principal.
Teachers in acting capacities to reap big from TSC
Apart from the special allowance, acting school heads will also have an upper hand in the ongoing teachers’ promotion exercise, with the TSC indicating that they will receive higher marks in the scramble to fill the positions substantively.
While lifting the lid on the promotion crisis, the TSC stated that it lacks qualified teachers to fill leadership roles, leading to the deployment of school heads in acting capacities.
TSC CEO says the government has been starting new schools without providing a budget for the promotion of teachers to head the new schools, thus the commission is forced to rely on acting administrators.
In November, TSC advertised 36,505 vacancies for promotions after the government provided Sh1 billion. Out of this, some 17,914 posts will go to primary school teachers.
The interviews for primary school teachers started on 4th December and ended on 15th December 2023.
Secondary school teachers interviews started this year. It will run from 3rd to 16th January 2024.
However, Macharia, while speaking in Mombasa during the 2023 Kenya Primary School Headteachers Association annual delegates conference, said the promotion was witnessing a low uptake among teachers.
Macharia said in the past TSC failed to attract enough applicants for promotional positions even after lowering the requirements.
This was similarly observed by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms in its report that termed the promotion criteria by TSC as rigid.
To address this, the report recommended that the Education Ministry harmonises teacher management policies, including the takeover of the career progression guidelines that guide teacher promotions.
This could force the TSC back to the drawing board to look for another mechanism to apply in promotions.
Macharia in her presentation to the Senate defended the promotion criteria as rigorous and competitive.
Teachers in acting capacities to reap big from TSC
