The Teachers Service Commission, TSC, has been allocated KSh1 billion for promotion of teachers.

Education Parliamentary Committee chairman Julius Melly has said the decision to allocate the promotion money was to motivate teachers to render quality teaching.

He spoke at the 46th Kenya Secondary School Heads Association Conference at Sheikh Zayed Hall in Mombasa.

“For a school to work, it must have a motivated teacher. A stagnated teacher is a problem. A teacher who is not appreciated does not work very well,” Melly said.

“That is why as the committee of education we have allocated Sh 1 billion for teacher promotion.”

He said that the money will be reinvented to allow the movement of teachers from D3 to D4 and to prevent teachers from being stagnated in one job for many years.

“The skewed promotion that we’ve seen will be dealt with in the next stage so that those members who have overstayed in D3, D2 could be moved and even the teachers be promoted,” Melly said.

“We do not want to see a teacher who has stagnated for 10, 15 years in one job group. It is demoralizing and it is wrong.”

He said the committee has discouraged the issue of acting promotions.

He termed it as wrong and demotivating.

“We need that teacher who has been taken over as a principal, give him the requisite documents and let him take up the school and he moves on,” Melly said.

“As a committee, we gave the TSC timelines. We do not want to see principals, deputies or senior teachers acting for a very long time. We are discouraging that as a member of the committee education.” He added.

During the meeting KESSHA chairman Kahi Indimuli castigated the TSC for not promoting teachers noting that most of those holding administrative positions are doing it on acting capacities.

He said that most deputy principals get demoted (when new Principals are posted) instead of being promoted to principals. According to Indimuli, there is a long chain of teachers holding administrative positions on acting capacities.

“It is demoralising and diminishing for a deputy principal to act for sometime and after a short while, they are demoted to either a class teacher or subject head,” Indimuli said.