Teachers Service Commission (TSC) yesterday clarified teachers who have been in acting positions will be given the first consideration during teachers’ promotions.

TSC board chair Jamleck Muturi and head of legal Calvin Anyuor told lawmakers they had made deliberate efforts to ensure deputy headteachers who have been acting as headteachers will be the first to get promoted.

Speaking when they appeared before MPs, the duo said some deputies had not been promoted because they had not met the requirements of moving to the next positions.

According to him, the job evaluation report categorised the grades of various teachers in national, county, extra-county and sub-county schools.

“We are going to ensure that the teachers get first priority. However, it cannot happen automatically because after the job evaluation criteria were done, schools were categorised from national, extra-county and sub-counties and the same were given grades and therefore, these grades must be met,” Anyuor said.

The commission, however, regretted they had for the past decade not been granted additional budgetary allocations for the promotion of teachers except in July 2017 when money was allocated for salary review based on the job evaluation report conducted by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.

Natural attrition

As of now, the commission said, about 15,000 teachers are projected to exit the service by December 31, due to natural attrition. “This is despite the existence of vacancies in the authorised establishment, creation of new schools and persistent budgetary requests by the commission,” said Anyuor.

The sentiments by the duo came after Lugari MP Nabii Nabwera raised concern that some of the deputies who have been in an acting capacity have never been promoted.

Meanwhile, the committee which is chaired by Tinderet MP Julius Melly gave the commission up to January 31 to ensure all teachers who had been delocalised have been transferred to their areas.

Melly told the commission not to belabour the matter but to ensure it tables a report on how it plans to implement the said move after the National Assembly made a decision on the said policy.

The move came after it emerged that about 14,733 teachers as of November last year had requested transfers from their current workstations following the abolishment of the policy on delocalisation of teachers.

Delocalisation policy

Said Melly: “We do not want stories, just tell us when you are going to do this, please table a report here for us to see. This policy was abolished and we cannot go back to it because we know that some of you use it to punish teachers.”

Last week, TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia told MPs that mapping out of the said teachers is ongoing to ensure that they are placed in the areas they have requested.

In November, Members of the National Assembly passed a motion calling for the abolishment of the policy which commenced in 2018.

 Following the move, the lawmakers then directed the commission to initiate a comprehensive review of the teacher deployment policy with the involvement of teachers to make the policy consistent with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UNESCO laws and practices on teacher management and deployment.