All public school teachers will be required to renew their professional certificates at select institutions after every five years - according to a new directive by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
Speaking during the rolling out of the Teacher Professional Development Programme on Wednesday, September 22, TSC CEO Nancy Macharia affirmed that all 340,000 staff would enrol in the new modules.
The professional training consists of six modules whereby each module lasts for five years. Further, all teachers will be required to pay Ksh6,000 per module.
Currently, four institutions have been contracted on an annual basis in order to implement the training.
These include Kenyatta University, Riara University, Mount Kenya University and Kenya Education Management Institute.
The TSC boss noted that the plan was to ensure that the teaching fraternity emulates other esteemed careers such as Law and Engineering - in keeping up with trends in the profession.
She noted that negotiating for teachers had become a daunting task over the years as tutors were often deemed as grouped generally based on the area of specialialization. Macharia noted that with the new training programme, the teaching profession would be accorded respect.
The news comes as TSC had also proposed to scrap off the Bachelor of Education degree as a requirement to join the workforce.
In its place, teachers would pursue a Bachelor of Arts course or a Bachelor of Science for a period of three years and later enrol for a postgraduate course for a period of one year in order to acquire a TSC number.
"In order to professionalise the teaching service and improve the quality of education, the commission needs to review entry grades to the teaching service and advice the national government.
"This will raise the standards of the teaching profession and attract more quality grades," TSC Quality Assurance Director Reuben Nthamburi stated.
