As Kenya celebrates a special group of 1.2 million candidates who will be joining Form One, TSC has congratulated the KCPE Class of 2021 and assured them of its preparedness to receive all of them in secondary school next term.
In a press release to the media houses, Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Nancy Macharia also thanked all teachers, including those who took part in the invigilation, supervision and marking for their creditable efforts that made the 2021 class ready for the KCPE Examination during an academic year that was heavily shortened.
She said that the 2021 KCPE exercise involved 28,255 Centre Managers, 28,546 Supervisors, 73,866 Invigilators and 7,275 Examiners.
The CEO reported that nearly all the 130,667 teachers involved in examination conducted themselves with utmost professionalism during the KCPE Examination process.
“I congratulate all the teachers and encourage them to keep up with the good spirit as per the Code of Regulations for Teachers. As a Commission, we will recognize and reward those who excelled in the process in line with the Performance Recognition, Reward and Sanctions Policy,” she said.
She thanked the government for finding resources to allow them to recruit an average of 5,000 teachers annually for public schools.
However, Macharia noted that there is a shortage of 114,581 teachers in primary and post-primary institutions due to increased enrolment arising from the increasing number of school-age children, the 100 per cent transition policy, registration of new school and natural attrition factors.
She said that the Commission will shortly be asking their field officers to conduct a routine exercise of assessing their sub counties to ensure that all schools have balanced teacher to learner ratios ahead of the start of the new academic calendar.
Macharia said that TSC intends to conclude the exercise by May 9, 2022 adding that the commission has continued to prepare all teachers for the phased implementation of the CBC.
“So far, we consistently ensured that relevant teachers were trained for all levels including the Grade Six, which will be covered starting next month,” said the CEO, citing that the total number of teachers trained in CBC in the last three years is 229,292 teachers.
She announced that the Commission has planned the training of 60,000 Junior secondary school teachers in CBC and Competency Based Assessment (CBA) with effect from 25th to 13th May 2022.
Dr. Macharia said teachers will be trained in specific learning areas in Languages, Pure sciences, Applied sciences, Mathematics, Humanities and Technical subjects.
By Catherine Muindi
