Opinion; The Government Should Employ More Teachers In Curbing Growing Education Need.


    Education CS Prof. George Magoha in a past                                  function|Facebook.

In a report published by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), "EVOLUTION OF REGISTER TEACHERS FROM 1967-2019, EVOLUTION OF REGISTER TEACHERS FROM 1967-2019 the Ministry of Education established an independent body (TSC) under Article 237 (1) of the Kenyan Constitution 2010 mandated to carry out teachers management functions in the country that includes, among others, register trained teachers, recruit and employ registered teachers and promote and transfer teachers.

The commission later moved to an online portal on 13th February, 2013 with 693,735 registered teachers by then. 

According to the Ministry of Education data, as at  2019,there were a total of 496,801 registered teachers in Kenya. The number has never been constant due to various factors like retirement, death and interdictions.

To-date, the number of teachers in Kenya is not enough to fulfill the proposed teacher/student ratio in Kenya of 1:40.

In most schools, a teacher attends to more than 40 students and in rear circumstances do a teacher attends to the required number of students.

With introduction of free primary education by former president Mwai Kibaki, subsidized fee payment in Secondary education and a hundred percent (100%) transition in both schools. The number of of students is growing daily. Teachers and administration were not prepared for this transition which forced them to build emergency classes almost immediately.

The number of teachers being employed by TSC is very low compared to student enrollment both in primary and Secondary schools. This calls for government attention to curb the deficit.

With COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, it has really affected our education sector. Schools were supposed to reduce the number of students per class to reduce the spread of the virus. While this was being done, there were no or minimal number of teachers who were being employed.

To achieve quality education therefore, the government should endeavor to empower education sector by actually employing more teachers. Adhere to the Ministry of Heath (MoE) protocols so that students can  e attended to by teachers freely for better results and performance.

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