Transfer some TSC functions to the ministry

A majority of Kenyans look at the Building Bridges Initiative as the panacea to our woes. Unfortunately, professionals seem to be in a quandary as to what their contribution to the BBI should be. Other than the doctors’ union and the Kenya National Union of Teachers, other professional bodies are in deep slumber.

Their silence is worrying considering the fact that all our professions can make crucial contributions to the Constitution. The sapience they command is needed now in our constitutional moment. Surrendering our fate to politicians only leads to political solutions, yet our woes are more complex to be seen from a political purview.

We must add our voice to the changes to contribute to the development of the nation. However progressive a constitution may be, it will still have some blots.

 Let’s examine the idea of constitutional commissions under the Ministry of Education. We created a behemoth in the name of the Teachers Service Commission, which is guided by articles 237 and 252 of the TSC Act.

Treat teachers cheaply

These legislations provide the force that the commission enjoys in carrying out its mandate. Some of the provisions give the commission a blank cheque. It can give it to anybody or cash it the way it deems fit.

Herein lies the greatest problem. Under an ambitious and callous personality, the commission can easily move away from its core mandate and treat teachers cheaply.

Many complaints have been made on how the commission conducts its activities. It has been characterised by high-handedness. Teachers and their unions have complained about its policies and activities, but they have always been dismissed. The commission is right and right is the commission. Even fellow statutory bodies have not escaped its wrath. It even defied the minister.

Qualification programmes

This newspaper recently reported that the commission plans to set up a college to re-tool teachers. To it, teachers are inadequately trained to handle the learning needs of the 21st Century. True.

It identifies the following areas as wanting in terms of teacher performance: content and performance standards, competency based curriculum, learner assessment, content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, instructional leadership and financial literacy.

To realise these, the commission envisages carrying out the following activities: courses and workshops, education conferences and seminars, qualification programmes, observation visits to other schools, professional development network, individual collaboration and research, and mentoring and peer observation.

It’s strange that having been the body mandated to re-tool teachers in the competency-based curriculum, it finds their skills wanting.

What does this tell us about its capacity to address professional teacher development considering that the CBC is an innovation where the implementers must be re-tooled?

It’s a given that for teachers to practice well, they should be exposed to in-service and refresher courses to re-boot. It’s time teachers developed the soft skills crucial in the fourth Industrial Revolution. However, should this require a college to be manned by the commission?

TSC should only concentrate on managing teachers. Issues of professional development should be taken up by the ministry. The commission lacks the capacity to handle satisfactorily matters touching on these areas.

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