The Teacher Service Commission has announced plans to retool teachers set to be deployed to teach Grade 7 pupils in January.
Julius Olayo, the Director of Human Resource Management and Development at TSC, said retooling the teachers is to ensure they meet expected standards to effectively deliver their mandate.
Olayo said TSC had so far trained 229,000 primary school teachers and 60,000 secondary school teachers on the Competency-Based Curriculum.
“Additionally, all field officers and curriculum support officers have been trained on CBC to understand the curriculum and be able to give instructional support during the implementation of the curriculum,” Olayo said.
“However, this training will be continuous and all teachers must be supported and equipped with the necessary skills to effectively deliver CBC.”
Olayo spoke in Mombasa Wednesday morning during the third day of the 18th Kenya Primary School Heads Association annual general meeting and conference at the Sheik Zayed Children Welfare Center in Mombasa.
He was representing the TSC chief executive Officer Nancy Macharia.
He said that TSC has also deployed competent CBC training teachers in all the teacher training colleges, therefore, by the time the current trainees graduate, they shall have gained enough skills to deliver the CBC.
He said the commission through the remote learning programme had managed to train 63,398 teachers on the use of different online platforms for teaching and learning to enable them to access content online and deliver lessons remotely.
Olayo said while a good number of teachers are tech-savvy, most of them are still learning to integrate ICT into the learning and teaching within the Competency-Based Curriculum.
“Creativity is a wide concept which includes going beyond the curriculum and exploring learning approaches that can help develop the imagination, innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving of the learner while making them happy and willing to learn,” he said.
Some 1,287,597 Grade 6 students who sat for their inaugural Kenya Primary School Education Assessment last week are set to join grade 7 in January.
is absent, it becomes difficult to catch up with others who were present in class.
Kenya National Union of Teachers secretary general Nelson Oyuu called on the government to increase capitation for primary schools now that they were going to host JSS.
Oyuu called for the realization of the equalization fund for primary schools saying that as primary school heads are now going to shoulder the responsibility of Grades 7,8 and 9, they need a better package as they take over the responsibility.
I want to appeal to the government especially the presidential working party, the workload in primary schools was overstretching the head teachers, now that we have an additional grade 7, 8 and 9, can we consider the plight of these school heads as they take care of the three grades in primary school,” Oyuu said.
The KNUT SG also said special needs schools should also be considered for special capitation, saying that they were in dire need of it.
“I want to also ask TSC that all head teachers and their deputies that have been in acting capacity be promoted by January 2023, there is no other way about it,” Oyuu said.
Kepsha national chairman Johnson Nzioka pleaded with the government to allocate a bigger share of the 30,000 new teachers to be recruited in January to primary schools to help handle Junior Secondary Schools.
“We are pleading with TSC now that JSS is domiciled in primary when you are employing the 30,000 new teachers, the elephant portion should be sent to primary schools to assist us,” Nzioka said.
