The national government has reconsidered its decision on introducing a mandatory fee for teachers undertaking a special type of training.
The employer introduced the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) training in October 2021 requiring teachers to pay Ksh6,000 for each of the part of the six modules they are meant to cover. In total, teachers were expected to pay a total of Ksh180,000 for that entire period.
However, the government has factored Ksh2 billion in the supplementary budget of 2021/2022 tabled before the National Assembly. The supplementary budget now awaits approval from MPs to allow the government to cover the costs.
"As a committee, we agreed to get this money from the Ministry of Education. We will now fight for the funds to be included in the main budget," Busia County Women Representative Florence Mutua, who also serves as the chair of the Education and Research Committee of the National Assembly stated.
The committee arrived at the decision while reviewing the amount of money to be budgeted for the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
In September 2021, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (KUPPET), petitioned Parliament to counter the directive issued by TSC arguing that asking teachers to pay the Ksh6,000 training fee was outrageous.
KUPPET chair and Emuhaya Member of Parliament, Omboko Milemba, stated that "We recommend that the Ministry of Education should take over implementation of the Teacher Professional Development (PTD) program as an integral part of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC),” Milemba stated.
“Parliament takes refresher courses. We go for benchmarking among others. It is funded through taxpayers’ money. Why would we object teachers to paying for their refresher courses?” John Mbadi, Suba South MP and the chairman of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) wondered.
Under the new programme that kicked off in December 2021, teachers are required to undergo an upskill module every five years. The training targeting over 5000 teachers will go through during school holidays failure to which they risk losing their teaching licences.
The course is currently being offered in just a few institutions including Riara University, Mt Kenya University, the Kenya Education Management Institute and Kenyatta University. The selected few were picked after passing the technicality tests.
This special type of training was first introduced in 2018. It however failed to take off after the Kenya National Union of Teachers moved to court demanding TSC to pay for the training.
The case was however withdrawn allowing the employer to re-introduce the training with teachers being expected to pay to attend the classes.
