The National Assembly’s Education Committee wants the government to pick up the bill for the mandatory refresher training course.
The committee said it will cost the taxpayer Sh4.5 billion to retrain 750,446 teachers.
The Education committee said it has made a request to the National Assembly to consider a budgetary allocation of Sh4.5 billion to cater for the refresher programme.
Taxpayers will pay the Sh4.5 billion for the controversial continuous training for teachers if MPs approve a recommendation by a parliamentary committee.
The National Assembly’s Education Committee wants the government to pick up the bill for the mandatory refresher training course.
The committee said it will cost the taxpayer Sh4.5 billion to retrain 750,446 teachers.
The committee said there are 341,760 teachers employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), 170,000 teachers in the private sector and 238,686 unemployed teachers bringing the total number to 750,446.
“The committee recommends that the Teacher Professional Development programme being a training initiated by the employer should be paid for by the government,” the National Assembly’s Education Committee said in a report.
The Education committee said it has made a request to the National Assembly to consider a budgetary allocation of Sh4.5 billion to cater for the refresher programme.
On September 22, 2021, the TSC announced the roll-out of the refresher course tagged Teacher Professional Development (TPD) which will be modular-based and aimed to boost tutors’ skills and guide their promotion.
Regulations 48 of the TSC Code of Regulations 2015 stipulate that every teacher is required to undertake the teacher professional development programme, which will determine among other issues, the promotion.
The in-service training lasts five years and teachers will be required to take five modules, which will cumulatively be undertaken for 30 years.
The programmes were introduced in 2018 to replace the schemes of service, which guided promotions, but they immediately ran into stiff opposition from the Kenya National Union of Teachers, which insisted that it was TSC’s duty to boost the capacity of its staff at its own cost.
Teachers were required to pay Sh6,000 each year or Sh180,000 to complete the five-year course.
The refresher courses will be a requirement for teachers and will enable them to renew their practising certificate every five years.
The trainers
Kenyatta University, Mount Kenya University, Riara University, and the Kenya Education Management Institute were selected to offer professional courses for teachers.
The committee has recommended that the TSC should stop the implementation of the TPD until a number of issues are addressed by the TSC.
“The committee recommends that the Teachers Service Commission suspends the roll-out and implementation of the Teacher Professional Development programme until…the TSC conducts extensive public participation.”
