4,676 Teachers To Exit TSC Payroll Tomorrow Through Retiremen
Tomorrow, 4,600 teachers who have reached the required retirement age will leave the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
Around 1,538 of them are school administrators, whose retirement is likely to make managing schools more difficult.
Teachers in the north-eastern region, however, would be permitted to continue working after reaching retirement age, according to the Commission.
Teachers who had achieved the necessary 60-year retirement age had been invited by the Commission in May.
After being overrun by a sizable number of teachers leaving the payroll from the counties of Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera, TSC was compelled to hire the teachers on a contract basis.
According to a news release from TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia dated May 18, 2023, “This mass retirement will result in a dire situation of teacher shortage in the region, which have been experiencing teacher shortage as a result of the recent exodus of non-local teachers.”
As a kind of compensation, the Commission will hire retired educators from the area on a three-year contract basis and then prolong the retirement time for educators by three years after they reach the legal retirement age.
This is claimed to be extended to all retired teachers from other regions of the country who could be willing to serve in the North Eastern region. They are instructed to report to the County Directors of the aforementioned counties for data collecting and eventual deployment.
To overcome the enormous shortfall in school administration, TSC had advertised almost 14,000 positions.
TSC first published an advertisement in December 2022 for 14,738 teacher promotions before removing it.
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Subsequent applications were subsequently requested in January, March, and, most recently, May of this year.
The openings came about naturally through attrition. TSC has been given Sh1.1 billion in current budget (2023-2024) to use in promoting additional teachers across various cadres.
The Commission is now working on issuing promotion letters to senior deputies and successful candidates who attended interviews.
The TSC County and Sub County Directors have a sizable amount of the promotion letters that will be distributed the next week.
The employer of the teachers requested applications from teachers for senior school administration posts in a third advertisement in May.
The May ad was produced as a result of TSC Chief Executive Dr. Nancy Macharia’s admission that the organisation had failed to fill the spaces in the previous two adverts by attracting the proper candidates.
In January and March of this year, the first and second calls for applications were issued.
The benefits of holding the top positions are likely to readily cause a rush for the jobs.
TSC nonetheless pleaded with competent teachers to fill approximately 1,001 openings within the next seven days in its May advertisement, though.
There were 987 Deputy Head-teachers in conventional primary schools among them, in addition to eight principals and six deputy principals in Special Needs Education (SNE) schools.
Dr. Macharia reopened the application period from June 9–15 so that interested teachers could submit their applications.
According to the Commission, “The Commission works to make sure that teachers are promoted as a means to recognise and reward teachers’ effort and performance, align them for succession planning and career advancement, and motivate them to perform better in their duties and responsibilities,” said Dr. Macharia.
TSC published an advertisement for promotion jobs in January of this year, resulting in 14,738 instructors being promoted to fill open positions in schools, institutions, and other settings where teachers were occupying temporary roles.
TSC claimed that despite several requests to fill the posts, hundreds of schools continue to operate without heads of institutions and deputy heads of institutions because teachers failed to submit applications for jobs that were advertised.
In order to effectively manage public schools, “the Commission also has a responsibility to provide Institutional Administrators for public educational institutions,” added Dr. Macharia.
Special needs public schools with students who have special needs and disabilities are among the affected institutions.
Positions for Chief Principals, Principals, Deputy Principals, Deputy Principals, Head Teachers, Deputy Head Teachers, Senior Masters and Senior Teachers were posted by the employer of teachers.
In SNE schools, there were four teachers serving as head principals, eight principals, and fifteen deputy principals.
To increase the total to 7,747 teachers, the TSC sought 7,720 deputy head teachers to take over in normal primary schools.
However, only 5,155 teaching positions were filled, leaving 2,592 open positions.
According to Dr. Macharia, only one teacher has applied to be chief principal so far. Two teachers have applied to be deputy principals in SNE schools, while 5,152 deputy head teachers have been hired in conventional primary schools.
With the exception of the four main principal jobs, TSC re-advertised the positions two months later.
The commission received 1,591 applications overall, including 7 for principal positions and 3 for deputy principal positions, all in SNE schools.
For deputy head teacher posts in normal elementary schools, 1,581 teachers applied.
