13,439 slots up for grabs: What it takes to join a teachers training college in Kenya
The gate to the entrance of Kwale Teachers Training College in Bang'a, Kinango Sub County. The term of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform will end next month yet there is a crisis in the enrolment of students in teacher-training colleges (TTCs).
The government has revised the entry criteria into teacher training colleges (TTCs) as implementation of education reforms continue across all sub-sectors.
The minimum requirement is now a mean grade of C (plain) in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination without additional subject requirements.
As a result, the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (Kuccps) has opened the portal for applications and hopes to admit 13,439 teacher trainees into Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) and Diploma in Early Childhood Teacher Education (DECTE) programmes in 32 public colleges. According to the Kuccps portal, the cost of training for the first year of both the DPTE and the DECTE is Sh72,076.
The review of the entry grades is one of the key recommendations in the report of the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) that is yet to be launched. However, piecemeal recommendations by the team have been implemented even without the formal launch of the report by President William Ruto, as expected.
The new admissions have done away with the subject cluster requirements previously used to admit students to the DPTE and DECTE programmes. Students were required to have a C (plain) grade in all the cluster subjects and also the same in English, Kiswahili, mathematics, a humanity and science subject, a combination that proved hard to strike.
Since the admission criteria was first used in 2021 as the Ministry of Education phased out the Certificate in Primary Teacher Training (CPTE), popularly known as P1, TTCs have failed to attract enough trainees. This raised concerns among stakeholders that the country may in the future lack enough teachers. There are currently, 3,922 students enrolled in TTCs against a capacity of 26,650.
The higher requirements were introduced following recommendations by the Teachers Service Commission, which is mandated by law to advise the government on minimum teacher training requirements.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu launched the application for placement over the weekend when he officiated at a career mentorship day at Kangaru School, Embu County. He announced that there are 11,358 admission slots in the DPTE programme and 2,081 in the DECTE course.
Kuccps chief executive officer Agnes Mercy Wahome, who spoke at the same forum, said the portal will remain open until July 28, 2023.
“This opportunity is for qualified KCSE certificate holders including non-Kenyan citizens who sat the examinations in 2022 or earlier until the year 2000,” said Dr Wahome.
The PWPER is reported to have also proposed affirmative action in admission of students from marginalised regions to TTCs. However, this has not been included in the advertisement by Kuccps. Such students are to be admitted on lower entry grades in an effort to train more teachers for the regions which are poorly staffed and unattractive to many teachers.
The phasing out of the P1 training programme was necessitated by the reforms that ushered in the competency-based curriculum and the need to have teachers with higher qualifications. Unlike in the P1 where teacher trainees studied all subjects, in the DPTE, they will specialise in their area of interest and qualifications. Students choose subjects from any of the four clusters.
