Teachers Service Commission (TSC) yesterday defended the controversial Teacher Professional Development (TPD), as details of the programme emerged.

TSC says the TPD is provided in law  and has been in place since 2015 albeit without  the knowledge of most stakeholders in education.

Article 48 of TSC Code of Regulations for Teachers 2015 states that every teacher should undertake the TPD prescribed or recommended by the Commission.

Approved institutions

Similarly, the regulations state that every teacher who successfully completes a TPD will be issued with a teaching certificate by the Commission.

“The Commission shall approve the training institutions to conduct TPD programmes. The approved institutions shall issue certificates to teachers upon completion of the programme,” states the regulations.

TSC regulations state that a certificate issued would  indicate the effective date and will be valid for five years or such other period as may be prescribed by the Commission.

Documents from TSC have shown that the commission commenced the process of identifying service providers about three years ago, where it invited tenders for provision of the TPD service and 34 institutions applied but only four qualified.

The four institutions that qualified were Mt Kenya University, Kenyatta University, Riara University and Kenya Education Management Institute.

TSC urged interested parties to provide a brief description of the organisation as well as outline recent experience on assignments of TPD nature, a description of the methodology and work plan for performing the assignment.

The TSC documents say the accredited firms would be expected to pay an accreditation fee of Sh50,000 to TSC and a negotiated rate per teacher per session.

TSC had also stated that before the contract negotiation, it would require assurances that the experts would be available.

On award of contract, TSC said would be done after negotiations were completed.

The commission said it has identified innovative assessment strategies to be used for the TPD programme.