TSC Intern Teachers Have a Reason To Smile

Dr. Nancy Macharia, the head of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), has said that teachers can’t do internships for more than two years.

Macharia said these words when she went to the Senate National Cohesion Committee to answer questions about hiring and moving teachers.

The TSC boss said this after the Senators asked for a freeze on regular and pensionable jobs for teachers and suggested that they be hired on contracts instead to make up for a shortage that the TSC says is 111,810.

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The Senate told the head of the TSC to find out what legal problems need to be fixed so that teachers can be hired on a contract basis. They said this would help the commission hire more teachers with its limited budget.

But Mrs. Macharia said that the commission can’t keep teachers on contracts for too long because it’s against the law. She said that after two years, the contracts would become permanent and teachers would be able to get a salary.

She also said that the Commission can’t hire enough teachers because it doesn’t have enough money for that.

“Because we don’t have enough money, we’ve never had enough teachers. Give us the money, and we’ll find people.” Mrs. Macharia said.

TSC Intern Teachers Have a Reason To Smile — A teacher During a Lesson in Kenyan School

Mrs. Macharia told the committee that records for the 36,000 new teachers are being worked on and that not all of them have been added to the salary yet. Only the files of 20,900 teachers are complete.

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The Uasin Gishu Senator Jackson Mandago said that the Employment Act should be changed to get rid of any legal barriers to letting teachers be hired on a contract, with clear rules about pay and length of service.

“We can’t let unions hold us hostage. “There are kids who need to learn and Kenyans who need to work,” he said.

Tharaka Nithi Senator Mahvenda Gataya said that a plan to hire people on a contract should be brought to the Cabinet for approval so that people who work for a certain amount of time can be hired permanently every year.

Also Read: TSC Transfers 15,824 Teachers, Nancy Macharia Says

Mrs. Macharia said that the shortage still exists even though the commission hired 36,000 teachers earlier this year. She said that 47,329 teachers are needed in elementary schools and 64,541 teachers are needed in secondary schools.

TSC Intern Teachers Have a Reason To Smile

“To do this, the commission needs Shl4.8 billion from the budget every year to pay for hiring teachers,” she said.

Last week, Mrs. Macharia said that the 20,000 teachers who were hired in February for internships will have to wait until January 2025 to get full-time work with pensions.

Also Read: TSC To End Recruitment Of Teachers on Permanent Basis

TSC hopes to hire 20,000 more contract teachers in the financial year that starts in July to help with junior secondary school (JSS) numbers, but this won’t be enough. It will cost Sh4.7 billion to hire people.

Ms. Macharia said that the commission wouldn’t have enough money to hire more teachers for JSS if it changed the terms of employment to permanent and pensionable.

She did say, though, that teachers hired to replace teachers who left because of natural turnover would be hired on permanent, pensionable terms.