The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has taken its Sub-County Directors (SCD) through various operations of the commission in a bid to improve their service delivery at the sub-county level.

During the training, the commission Acting Director in charge of staffing Antonina Lentoijoni, who handled decentralized functions, highlighted various challenges the commission faces in the TSC’s core mandate of teacher recruitment, transfer, posting, promotion, and management of TMIS data.

She highlighted that the major reason for forgery of certificates is recruitment of unqualified applicants, impersonation, lack of authenticity of applicant’s past history, vested interests, lack of understanding of the teacher recruitment policy, and failure to undertake verification of certificates.

Delays in posting and reporting of teachers, lack of adequate data of disqualified applicants, failure to finalize the teacher recruitment process, uneven distribution of newly recruited teachers in schools, and failure to maintain gender balance in schools were also mentioned as some of the causes.

The officers were advised that during recruitment, they should ensure that the teachers are eligible for recruitment, must be registered and must not have been dismissed and convicted.

During teacher transfer, the commission noted that it faces various challenges which include failure to meet service charter commitments, with SCDs being instructed to always acknowledge teacher transfers and do regret after 90 days.

Other challenges include transfers not being captured in the entry-exit system and data inconsistencies, with officers approving transfers before all other relevant parts are filled, idle capacity of teaching staff, and unequal distribution of teachers.

The commission has a total of 348 SCDs, about 332 of them deployed to various sub-counties as sub-county bosses who are tasked with the crucial role of teacher management at that level. The remaining are stationed at the commission headquarters in Nairobi.