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The government has affirmed its commitment to ensuring student to teacher ratio is realistic and attainable by employing 20,000 more teachers to address the acute shortage.

Speaking at Kolanya Girls National School, Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu noted that already the Kenya Kwanza administration has employed over 50,000 teachers within its first year in office. “Since independence, the government made a record recruitment of 56,750 teachers to help manage the acute shortage of teachers in the country,” Machogu noted.

The CS at the same time urged students to embrace TVET institutions to equip themselves with relevant skills for the job market within and outside the country.

“The government has made sure all constituencies have a TVET institution to ensure we have a young generation with skills for the market both locally and overseas,” Machogu said. “Already the government has released Sh23 billion for capitation to public secondary schools ending the prolonged financial crisis, which threatened to disrupt operations at the institutions,” he added.

Meet standards

The CS, who also affirmed the government’s commitment on improving school infrastructure gifted Kolanya Girls and St Pauls Amukura Sh10 million cheque each to enhance infrastructure to accommodate the population in the two insitutions.

Machogu also called on parents to take advantage of various TVET institutions to equip their children with relevant skills for the job market. “The whole world is now rerouting to technical courses. That is why we have laid emphasis on TVET training to accommodate the dream of CBC as well as attaining the vision 2030,” CS noted.

His sentiments come amidst an outcry by Teso South Member of Parliament Mary Emase, urging the government to promote teachers as a motivating factor to boost overall performance in schools.

“We have teachers with doctorate yet they are still in primary school. It is time the ministry relooks into the matter and implement the recommendation by the task force on teacher’s promotion,” said Emase.

The legislator urged the community to work with the government to avoid being sidelined in allocation of projects.

School principal Dr Tabitha Okama noted that already, the institution is the worst hit by shortage with only 40 TSC employed teachers against a target of over 65 in line with Ministry of Education guidelines.

“We are already overstretched owing to the fact that this is a national school with only 40 TSC teachers forcing us to employ over 20 others under BoM to be in tandem with teacher-student ratio,” Dr Okama said.

Teso North sub-county was recognised as the most improved with Kolanya girls emerging as the best school in the region.