Primary school head teachers have welcomed the government’s plan to employ 30,000 teachers by January next year ahead of the official roll out of junior secondary schools competence based curriculum (CBC) programs.
Kenya Primary school heads association (Kepsha), chairperson Johnson Nzioka, said even as the teacher’s service commission TSC races against time to train and employ teachers, the institutions have the capacity for the roll out.
“We thank TSC for indicating that it will employ 30,000 teachers, that has been our prayer and we are happy, because this will go a long way to alleviate the teachers shortage that the country has faced,” said Nzioka.
This is as all grade 6 learners who completed their grade 6 Kenya Primary schools Education Assessment (KPSEA) will transition to junior secondary schools domiciled in existing primary schools.
To enhance the capacity, President William Ruto has announced that the government will recruit more teachers by January, and asked the teachers commission TSC to ensure retooling of teachers who are compliant with CBC.
“We have the capacity to take care of our children from grade 7-9 in our primary schools; sometimes we are surprised when we talk about capacity, because when we talk about teachers, they have upgraded themselves by furthering education, right now we have more than 60 percent of teachers in primary as graduates,” said Nzioka.
Speaking in Mombasa ahead of the annual Primary school head teacher’s conference, Nzioka noted that there was no cause for alarm in terms of teacher preparedness, since most of the teachers have advanced their studies in compliance with CBC teachers.
“In terms of infrastructure, the children who are transiting to grade seven, they already have the rooms that have been vacated to those who have moved to standard eight, so we have the capacity,’Nzioka added.
The CBC task force appointed by the president has recommended that junior secondary learners be domiciled in existing primary schools.The report submitted to the President on Thursday further directed that the ministry adds additional classrooms and a laboratory.
“We have seen the interim report recommending the domiciling of the junior secondary in primary, this alone will save the government the agony of the 100 percent transition, so we are leaving the secondary to create the space,” he added.
Nzioka said they are not worried about private schools supplementing public schools because of the huge investment that they have put in place. He said the domiciling of junior secondary has saved the disability learners from the most disadvantaged they would have faced.
The conference that has so far attracted over 10,000 delegates, among them head teachers and exhibitors, seeks to come with plans of easing the burden of parents. This is as concerns emerged that some teachers had taken advantage of asking learners to bring chicken, only to be eaten by teachers after teaching sessions.
“These are the gaps that we are working towards bridging, because we are saying the designs have various options of tackling certain topics, so you don’t have a chicken in school, there are options which are given in the designs, in such a way that we can handle lessons with locally available materials in the schools,” he added.
On delocalization, KEPSA says there are no longer issues of delocalization because most of the teachers are happy with their new working stations. He says if there are concerns can be handled internally.
This year's conference theme of the conference is "managing transition of competence based Based curriculum for effective nurturing of each learner's potential'.The conference is expected to be opened by president william Ruto on Tuesday,and will run till Friday Dec 9,2022.
