Lawmakers fault CBC training of teachers
The in-service teacher training for Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) lacks proper coordination, Members of Parliament have warned.
National Assembly Budget and Appropriation Committee report states that there is lack of coordination between Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and State Department for Implementation of Curriculum Reforms in terms of rolling out CBC training for in-service training.
“This uncoordinated approach may create unnecessary conflict and also send mixed signals in terms of Government collective support of the transition to the new curriculum,” committee said.
Last month, TSC launched the CBC training for Junior Secondary School teachers, in preparation for the transition to Grade Seven next year.
According to TSC, 60,000 secondary school teachers drawn from both public and private schools, including Special Needs institutions were trained during the first phase last month. Target is to train all the 116,024 secondary school teachers by the end of the year.
So far, some over 229,200 teachers have gone through training and another 191, 515 will be trained over the next three years.
The National Treasury allocated Sh1.2 billion for training of teachers on CBC in the 2022/23 Financial Year.
Other issues raised are on internship of teachers, with the committee saying that TSC policy requires a trained teacher to be below 35 years to qualify to be recruited on contract or intern.
“This has disadvantaged teachers above 35 years in terms of securing a permanent teaching job since priority is given to those who have gone through internship,” report states.
In the Financial Year 2022/23, the government has allocated the TSC Sh1.2 billion to recruit 6,000 interns as a stopgap measure to ease the shortage in schools, which stand at 114,581 teachers.
