Newly employed tutors to earn pay immediately

Newly employed teachers will no longer have to wait for three months to receive their first salary.

In new reform measures being implemented by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), such teachers will start receiving their salaries during the first month of their employment.

The newly recruited 9,000 teachers, who are expected to report to their new stations on September 1 will be the first to benefit from the new reforms when they smile all the way to the bank to receive their salaries at the end of September.

Under the new reforms, the teachers’ employer has introduced an online system to cut delays in the disbursement of teachers’ salaries.

TSC Secretary Dr Nancy Macharia said the teachers will report under new online reform measures currently being implemented by the Commission, which allows them to receive their salaries at the end of the first month.

The reporting system for the new teachers is expected to end delays in processing their first month pay from the initial three months to just one.

“In enhancing its transformation agenda set out in the 2019/2023 Strategic Plan, the Commission has successfully developed the entry/exit report module and migrated its services related to posting, transfer and deployment of teachers as well as filling entry and exit returns to an online system,” said Macharia in a circular to all education field officers dated August 24.

No manual filing

Macharia directed that there will no longer be manual filing of entry and exit reports commonly known as ‘Casualty returns’ for teachers once this new online module is fully implemented on October 1.

Principals usually write the ‘casualty returns’ whenever new teachers report to schools, data which is subsequently sent to TSC and used to pay teachers or undertake other processes.

 TSC has already sent a circular to all field officers spelling out implementation of the new online module on posting, entry and exit of teachers.

According to Macharia, the initiative is intended to eventually phase out all the manual processes pertaining to issuing, submission and processing of posting, transfer, deployment letters and related returns with the ultimate goal of enhancing service delivery to teachers and stakeholders.

“The module will be accessed on the TSC website where the user guidelines have also been provided.

The Commission’s field staff and Heads of institutions are directed to acquaint themselves with the module in readiness for roll out on October 1,” said Macharia.

In June, TSC advertised for 8,914 teaching vacancies out of whom 3, 897 will be posted to primary schools and 4,927 for secondary.

The recruitment exercise took place in counties for primary schools and in schools for secondary. The new teachers are expected to report as students resume learning after half term break.

For secondary schools, the additional number of teachers is towards addressing the 100 per cent transition from primary.

The Ministry of Education is still undertaking the mop up exercise to ensure that all those who were to join Form One do so, and is to continue until the over 1 million who sat their 2020 KCPE are enrolled to secondary schools.

Some of the counties that have a high transitions are Nyeri, Nyamira, Bomet, Mandera, Nyandarua, Kisii, Homa Bay, Kirinyaga, Migori and Kiambu. However, the national government is mandated to develop educational policies, curriculum, maintain standards.