Unilateral edicts unfair to teachers

For the longest time, I have been genuinely sympathetic with many policy decisions taken by the Teachers Service Commission, the government agency charged with employing thousands of men and women who impart valuable knowledge, work-ethic and, possibly, a little wisdom to more than 17 million children in our schools.

There are three main reasons for this: One, the TSC gave me my very first job eons ago before I ventured into journalism, and two, I am a true believer in education as the only way to uplift the living standards of every Kenyan who embraces it.

The third reason may sound corny, but I really did not like the way the fate of teachers was largely determined by the animosity between two individuals – a trade unionist and the teachers’ employer.

The numerous quarrels between the former Kenya National Teachers Union (Knut) secretary-general Wilson Sossion and the TSC chief executive Nancy Macharia over policy issues, salaries and perks were never beneficial to teachers and there is a general feeling that matters could have been handled differently. Instead, the noble profession was always the chief casualty.

Policy decisions

Now that Mr Sossion is no longer a unionist, it is easy to see that his complaints were not always misplaced: The TSC has seemingly formed a habit of coming up with policy decisions that are quite unfavourable to teachers without consulting the parties most concerned. It all started with the now infamous delocalisation policy. While the intention was sound and legal, some of its ramifications were harmful to many teachers.

Apparently, nobody in the TSC would take into account the sensible argument that uprooting a teacher who is two years away from retirement and posting him or her to another school hundreds of kilometres away was always bound to be counter-productive.

Even when it was pointed out that in such a situation it would be best to target the younger neophytes in the profession because they would find it easier to adapt to changed circumstances, the TSC doggedly carried on, thus prematurely breaking many careers in their sunset years.

Things became so bad some wags opined that Dr Macharia herself should herself be delocalised and sent to the remotest corner of the Republic. Indeed, were it not for presidential intervention, this policy would have hurt even more people for reasons that were never compelling.

Impoverish teachers

Now the TSC is about to do something similar; it seeks to implement a policy that, at face value, makes a great deal of sense but which will further impoverish poorly paid teachers. Very few teachers, except the congenital lazybones, would object to the idea of refresher courses to equip them with the necessary skills to do their jobs better.

In fact, with the birth of the little-understood Competency-Based Curriculum, which has raised howls of protest from parents and educationists, it is necessary for teachers to keep abreast of the new-fangled CBC.

 Let me record a disclaimer here; It has been a long time since I was either a teacher or a parent to any young learners and so I really should not be concerned.

However, from the standpoint of natural justice, I really fail to see why teachers should pay, from their pockets, to be taught how to handle a curriculum they had little input in formulating. According to the TSC, teachers, who must undergo that training, will have to pay for the privilege, and it will not be a one-off thing.

 It appears the so-called Teacher Professional Development (TDP) programme was hastily conceived without taking into account just how much teachers earn.

According to the latest salary-scale figures, the lowest-paid teacher at Job Group “G” earns Sh27,195 per month while the highest-paid, at Job Group “R” – otherwise known as Chief Principals– earn Sh157,656 a month. The latter are men and women in charge of more than 1,000 students and a sizeable workforce of teachers and subordinate staff.

 And yet each of these folk is supposed to fork out Sh6,000 every year and complete six training modules (each module takes five years), which means that by the end of the first module, they will have parted with Sh180,000. Even while not counting the cost in monetary terms, the absurdity is compounded by the fact that by the time a new teacher completes all the six training modules (35 years), he or she will be retiring. Of what use will all these refresher courses be then?

 Unless there is something we are not being told, the whole thing doesn’t add up. In any case, and here is the crux of the matter, ordinarily, any employer who wishes to upgrade the skills of his or her staff, should be ready to pay for it.

But not the TSC, which seems to have its own way of doing things and is always spoiling for a fight. Anyway, the matter is already in court and more clarifications may emerge during the hearing.

At the same time, Parliament has already been petitioned on the same issue, and it will be a miracle if the TSC beats back this double tackle.

 Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]