The Teachers Service Commission(TSC) Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia has explained how top Kenyan Universities missed out on the multi-million teachers training program rolled out for a period of one year.
Speaking on Tuesday, November 30, Macharia stated that when the initiative was launched, many universities, especially public universities, gave them wide berth.
According to the commission, they expected many universities to put in so much effort in a bid to get this contract, but many of them missed out.
Macharia says that the snub came as a shock to the commission, as they knew many public universities were struggling in debt, and being part of such a lucrative program would be a game changer to most of them.
"It is quite shocking to realize that only 8 institutions applied for the contract, and four out of those are the only ones who qualified to train tutors under the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) program," Macharia stated.
The institutions which successfully got the contract are Kenyatta University, Riara University, Mt Kenya University and the Kenya Education Management Institute.
The commission stated that they would have wanted many public universities to participate, but since they didn't apply, they should take up the opportunity when it will be rolled out next time.
“We would have liked to have public universities apply because that’s the way to go but they did not,” TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia stated.
This programme is meant to see all registered teachers across the country in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions take a module to improve their skills every five years, or risk losing their teaching license.
The program has six modules to cover, and each module costs Ksh 6,000 annually for five years, making teachers have to pay a total of Ksh 180,000 for the entire period.
This initiative has however sparked uproar from the teachers, who argued that the commission was hell bent to roll out the program in order to frustrate them.
Macharia however defended the refresher program, saying that all they need is to have well trained teachers, who will then deliver quality education to Kenyan learners.