TSC promotes 25,252 teachers amid protest over criteria used.
The release of the interview results follows Kenya Secondary School Heads Association’s protest against a promotion criteria, which they called unjust to certain instructors, and their request that the TSC suspend it, by only two weeks.
The school principals argued to the National Assembly and the commission that the TSC’s quota system for teacher promotions disadvantages areas with a greater concentration of qualified candidates.
The vacancies were posted by the TSC late last year, and interviews were held early this year. The TSC website has the list.
The promoted teachers include 19,943 others who were advertised in December and 5,690 who applied for promotions that were advertised in November 2024.
This means that 381 positions remain unfilled. The commission had requested Sh2 billion for teacher promotion but had only received Sh1 billion.
Moses Nthurima, the acting secretary-general of the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet), called for the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to retract the list as soon as it was posted on its website, claiming that opportunities had been unfairly distributed among the counties.
The union contends that the distribution procedure neglected to take into account variations in teacher populations, thus disadvantaging teachers in densely populated regions.
When it organized a nationwide teachers’ strike in August 2024, one of Kuppet’s complaints was the promotion of teachers.
Ms. Macharia received a letter from Jeremiah Ndombi, the clerk of the National Assembly, dated March 28, 2025, in which he stated that the topics to be discussed included the TSC’s long-term plan for promoting teachers in a transparent, merit-based, and equitable manner, as well as financial sustainability, affirmative action, equity, and regional balance in promotions.
A comprehensive report on teachers promoted over the past three years, including the categories and areas of those promotions, is anticipated from the TSC. Also up for discussion are adherence to legal frameworks and contracts with teachers’ unions.
The letter asks, “What measurable impact has the delay in promotions had on teacher morale, retention, and overall education quality?”
In response to the release of the list, Kuppet officials charged that the vacancy allocation for promotions was biased and ignored differences in teacher populations, which put teachers in more populated areas at a disadvantage. This resulted in a skewed system that disregarded merit and workload distribution.
“Such equal distribution is intrinsically erroneous and puts instructors in high-density regions at a disadvantage due to the differences in staffing levels nationwide.” Some counties have over 11,000 teachers, while others have just 1,000. Therefore, the populous counties will be less impacted when you evenly distribute those slots. Such equitable distribution is intrinsically incorrect given the variation in workforce numbers throughout the nation and the fact that unsafe instructors are working in high-population areas, according to Moses Nthurima, acting secretary-general of Kuppet.
“We demand that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) retracts the released list of promotions and revises it to guarantee a more fair process,” he continued. He gave a speech at a press conference held at the Nairobi union headquarters.
The union further charged the TSC with political interference in the promotion process, claiming that some areas seem to have been preferred while others are still suffering from stagnation brought on by intense competition. They contend that the pro-rata promotion policy, which has been in place for a long time, has been inequitably enforced and needs to be reevaluated.
“This suggests that the TSC was established under the influence of politics. The commission is no longer autonomous since it may be influenced to approve important promotions, which are few and extremely sought after. The strong implication is that, due to fierce competition among equally sized counties, teachers in smaller counties who receive preferential treatment and their counterparts in more populated counties are being ignored. He stated that the released promotion list seems manipulated, with promotions being repeated numerous times to give the impression that the procedure is being conducted correctly.
Mr. Nthurima criticized the government’s insufficient financing of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and expressed worry about its management.
The union claims that just a handful of national schools are adequately equipped to teach STEM subjects, leaving students in county and sub-county schools at a disadvantage.
“Simply because most schools lack resources, we cannot endorse a system that disregards STEM education.” “If we want to achieve industrialisation by 2030, the government must take education financing seriously,” he stated.
