Members of Parliament have asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to prepare a legal document that will facilitate the government to pay the annual refresher training fee for tutors.
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Honourable. Omboko Milamba, who is also the president of Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), said the money should be paid by the state through TSC.
“TSC must now go back to preparing a legal document that led to the TPD event, explaining how the training fee came about and the money demanded,” Milamba said.
Members of the National Assembly Education Committee demanded to know why TSC’s chief executive, Nancy Macharia, did not include the training fee as a budgetary requirement. Macharia was also asked to explain how the training fee came about, as lawmakers argued that school fees and university fees are also highly regulated.
“We would like to know why the TSC has not mentioned this money in its budget statement so that it can be an independent budget line funded by the government,” said committee chair Florence Mutua.
The lawmakers asked Macharia to prepare and submit a legal framework that would enable the government to pay training fees. She had appeared before lawmakers to defend the TSC budget requirements.
The MPs argued that all fees are set by Parliament and wanted to know the formula used by TSCs to cap training fees. Macharia said that the TPD in the Act is anchored in the Constitution under Section 35(2)(a) of the TSC Act.
Each of the 340,000 teachers is required to undertake compulsory vocational courses which will inform their promotion and professional development.
The refresher course called Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has been organized into chapters which will be taken up every year at a cost of Rs.6,000.
This means that throughout the teaching career, each teacher will have to take five modules within 30 years, which translates into a fee of approximately Ksh. 180,000.
