Igembe North MP Julius Taitumu has appealed to TSC to proportionately allocate primary teachers’ employment slots in the ongoing recruitment drive, to avoid disadvantaging counties with more schools and pupils.
He said it was unfair to equitably allocate the 1,000 and 4,000 teachers to be recruited on permanent terms and internship respectively to the 47 counties, yet population and services required varied.
Speaking at Laare town, Mr Taitumu noted that each county would get about 21 teachers hired on a permanent basis, which he said would be unfair to largely populated counties.
The MP, who is also the Nyambene Knut executive secretary, called for a pro rata based recruitment so as to ensure each region was allocated based on their individual need.
He cited Meru County with its 15 densely populated sub counties, as one area which will get a raw deal in the recruitment drive.
What I think is fair is to do a pro rata based recruitment not on land size. Equal distribution will disadvantage some consumers of the services offered by the teachers.
“A constituency like Imenti South has a larger population and more primary and secondary schools than some counties that you know. Kindly appropriate in terms of the number of schools and pupils,” Mr Taitumu appealed.
He clarified that the bulk of the 35,550 teachers being recruited by TSC would be dispatched to the secondary school sector, 9,000 of them on permanent and 21,550 others as interns.
“Teachers are already emotionally charged that 35,000 of them are being employed. This year’s employment is tailored to junior secondary school. We are transiting from the 8-4-4 system and we have the first class of junior secondary and each class should have a teacher. That is why over 30,000 teachers are being employed in the secondary sector and very few in the primary sector,” he said.
The legislator at the same time revealed that parliament was pushing TSC to prioritize employment of teachers based on the year they graduated as opposed to the marks they scored.
The Education and Research committee noted that those who scored a pass qualified to be teachers but could lose out on employment if those with superior grades were prioritized.
If you look at the marks, some will be left out because one can graduate today and get first class honours yet another graduated five years ago and got a pass. If you got a pass, you qualify to be a teacher but currently it means that this person will wait for a longer time,” said Mr Taitumu
