TSC invites teachers to apply for over 36,000 promotion slots

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has announced that it has 36,505 vacancies for promotions for teachers in primary and secondary schools.

The TSC chief executive officer Nancy Macharia said that 17,914 of these vacancies are for primary school teachers in various grades. She urged teachers to apply for these positions, especially those in Special Needs Education, where there is a serious shortage of qualified staff.

Macharia said that the TSC has not been able to fill all the promotional positions in the past, even after lowering the requirements. She encouraged the teachers who have been shortlisted for the interviews, which will take place from December 4 to 16, to attend them without fail.

Macharia was speaking at the Kenya Primary School Headteachers Association annual delegates conference in Mombasa. She thanked the government for allocating Sh1 billion for the promotion of teachers in the 2023-24 financial year. She said that this was the first time since 2011 that the TSC received funds for this purpose.

She also said that the government provided funds to recruit 56,000 teachers in the last year, most of whom were posted to the Junior School. She advised the unemployed teachers to apply for jobs in any part of the country, and not to limit themselves to their home counties.

She said that in the recent recruitment exercise, 1,123 vacancies remained unfilled across the country, despite the high number of jobless teachers in other counties.

Macharia also said that the TSC has trained 56,928 teachers, including 48,550 newly recruited Junior School teachers and 8,378 teachers who were transferred from primary to Junior School. She said that the TSC has automated the transfer process for teachers, to make it easier and more transparent.

She said that the teachers can now track the status of their transfer requests online, and that the approval process is also done online by the relevant authorities. She said that the TSC is upgrading the current transfer module to make it more intelligent and accurate, and that it is piloting a new module that will match the teacher applications to the available vacancies.

Macharia also said that the TSC will allow the current primary school heads to continue managing the Junior School, as the commission consults with stakeholders on the best administrative structure for the Comprehensive School (Pre-primary to Grade 9).

She said that the TSC is also digitising its estimated 108 million records, which include the personal files, discipline files, and pension files of the teachers and the secretariat staff. She said that this will improve the efficiency and accuracy of the TSC services.