TSC to recruit 20,000 new teachers with Science Teachers getting a lion share
It is good news for teachers teaching in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) as the government set to advertise 20,000 job vacancies under the contract type category, which will give hundreds of thousands of jobless teachers a chance to change their standards.
Science teachers will be given priority during the recruitment exercise.
The recruitment follows the first round, where 46,000 teacher positions were put under permanent and pensionable terms a week ago.
Teachers Service Commission boss, Nancy Macharia says that after the recruitment process is over, the commission will thereafter call for teachers to apply for promotions.
According to TSC Boss Nancy Macharia, Kenya’s education sector is grappling with a critical shortage of science teachers, despite a pool of over 400,000 unemployed educators, the majority of whom are trained in arts disciplines.
This has raised alarms within the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), which has warned that the imbalance threatens to disrupt learning, particularly in science subjects.
During a session with the National Assembly Education Committee, TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia highlighted the challenge, noting that despite efforts to recruit more teachers, budget constraints and a skewed supply of arts-trained graduates have hindered the filling of critical science positions.
“We have informed the Ministry of Education and universities that we face a serious shortage of science teachers. Even before the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) was introduced, we would advertise positions for physics teachers across the country but receive no applicants. We’ve issued advisories on this repeatedly,” Macharia explained.
Macharia further warned that staffing inadequacies are set to persist, particularly in Junior Secondary Schools, where a clear policy framework for teacher distribution is lacking. “Our data shows that the majority of unemployed teachers are arts graduates. This imbalance is something we must address urgently,” she added.
