TSC Changes Rehabilitation Rule for Alcoholic Teachers
School administrators who have ongoing alcoholism or drug abuse issues will receive three months of treatment at no cost from the Teachers Service Commission.
TSC Chairman Jamleck Muturi made this announcement on Wednesday in Mombasa at the 46th Annual National Conference of the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association.
According to Muturi, the TSC has set up a fully functional wellness clinic with a trained medical team to assist in the rehabilitation of principals and teachers who turn to alcoholism, drug abuse, or other substance misuse as a result of workplace stress.
“Principals work in settings that are quite difficult. We treat substance misuse, including alcoholism, like a sickness, Muturi added.
“We will give such teachers paid leave and reserve a three-month stay in a rehabilitation facility for them.”
Principals are currently dealing with difficult circumstances brought on by rising student enrollment without corresponding increases in financing.
Indimuli Kahi, chair of Kessha, stated that the financing schools receive does not take into account new duties like hiring Board of Management teachers for subcounty schools.
He pointed out that subcounty schools are often day schools and cannot impose any fees.
Kahi stated, “These schools suffer when capitation is delayed because how do you feed the students and how do you employ the BOM teachers?
According to him, this causes the principals’ stress levels to rise quickly, and some of them end up becoming alcoholics or abusing drugs and other substances.
According to Muturi, the commission received a budget increase of Sh323.7 billion in the 2023–24 fiscal year, an increase of Sh24 billion over the 2022–23 budget.
To help deal with the teacher shortage, Sh4.6 billion of this will be used to hire 20,000 teacher interns.
We will advertise for these posts by the end of next week so that individuals who are qualified can submit applications, said Muturi.
He said that the government had previously funded the hiring of intern teachers.
The advancement of teachers, especially principals who have lagged for a while, has also been allocated about Sh1 billion.
The TSC chair declared, “We want driven principals.”
The CBC will enhance its teacher capacity with a further investment of Sh1.3 billion.
Additionally, the commission has trained 163,938 instructors nationwide in the use of remote learning.
This implies that a teacher at Machakos High School could be able to use technology to remotely instruct students at Kanga High School.
According to Muturi, “this is intended to help deal with the teacher shortage situation that we currently have in the country.”
This goes above and beyond the government’s current initiatives to increase teacher employment.
The government hired 30,550 instructors for junior secondary schools during the 2022–2023 fiscal year.
There were 21,550 intern instructors, compared to 9,000 regular teachers with pension rights.
Accordingly, a school with one stream received one teacher while one with three streams received three teachers.
To be productive and efficient, Muturi challenged principals to be wise and creative in how they use the few resources they had.
He exhorted them to develop creative sources of income in order to supplement the government financing, which is never enough.
“A school can raise chickens as a project and sell them or the eggs they lay,” Muturi added.
TSC Changes Rehabilitation Rule for Alcoholic Teachers
