Over three hundred thousand teachers have been trained and registered by the teachers service commission, however, they have not secured a vacancy for employment by the commission. To this group, a major announcement has been made by the TSC.
The announcement made is that these groups of teachers must undertake the upgrading program that is ongoing for them to be compliant with the new curriculum.
However, after undertaking the nine months upgrading program the teachers shall not be absorbed directly but they will still have to follow the normal procedure for recruitment.
In a meeting with the Senate committee, Dr Nthamburi director of quality assurance and standards TSC said that it is due to the challenges that the newly posted teachers are experiencing when teaching the new curriculum that made the commission decide that the unemployed teachers must be conversant with CBC first before posting hence mandatory upgrading.
He further added that the upgrading program is different from TPD and hence the two should not be confused. The upgrading program is meant to familiarize the unemployed primary teachers with CBC and after completing the nine months program they will be on the same level as DPTE graduates.
The bad news is that the cost of upgrading the program will be met entirely by the teachers themselves. Neither the government nor TSC will chirp in to reduce the cost for the teachers.
Based on analysis done public institutions will be offering the upgrading program for 68,000 shillings while the private institutions will offer the Same training at a cost of around Kenya shillings 84,000 for the nine months.
Content to be handled during the upgrading program is that from P1 training and the new content in Diploma for Primary Teacher Education. The gaps meant to be filled by the program shall be looked at as well, Dr Nthamburi said.
