TSC to train Junior Secondary Teachers

The Teachers Service Commission will begin retooling of teachers who will handle Grade seven learners in Junior Secondary Schools (JSSs)

In a memo dated February 15, 2023 and copied to all TSC Regional and County Directors, Quality Assurance and Standards Director Dr. Mugwuku Nthamburi noted that the retooling will involve the Trainers of Trainers (ToTs) and Master Trainers who will offer professional support and training.

The trainings will be held in person using the face-to-face smart cascade model of training from March 13 to 19, 2023 in Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) and select venues in counties and will be attended by head teachers and teachers of languages, science, mathematics, humanities and technical subjects.

The teacher capacity development will be conducted as follows:-

Head Teachers will be retooled for 3 days face to face and teachers will be retooled for 6 days face to face while the TOTs will retool teachers for 6 days as the master trainers offer professional support during the retooling of teachers.

The exercise will be non-residential for non-ASAL where teachers will be refunded transport money; and will be residential for ASAL teachers who will be provided with accommodation allowance.

It will also be residential for Special Needs Education (SNE) teachers in both ASAL and non-ASAL regions, ToTs and regular teachers; and will be provided with accommodation allowance.

Every primary school will identify 3 teachers and the head teacher for retooling as follows; head teachers for both regular and SNE, teachers with Bachelor’s Degree or Diploma in Education with at least C+ (Plus) mean grade or its equivalent and two teaching subjects, and teachers currently recruited for JSS.

The target teachers will be clustered in the following subject areas; English, Literature, Foreign and Indigenous languages, Kiswahili and Kenya Sign Language, Pure sciences – Integrated science – Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Health Education; and Mathematics.

Humanities: Social Studies (Citizenship, Geography, History), Religious Studies (CRE, IRE, Hindu, HRE and PPI) and life skills.

Technical subjects: Pre Technical and Pre Career Education, Business Studies, Sports and Physical Education, Home Science and Art & design.

Number of target participants with C+ and above (Regular) from all the 47 counties will be 11,192 teachers while those who were recruited by TSC in January 2023 are 30,550 teachers.

The number of target participants (SNE) will be 2,235 teachers from primary schools and 196 ToTs. Head teachers (regular) attending will be 22,482 from schools from all the 47 counties while Head teachers (SNE) will be from 745 schools.

The total number of teachers to be trained will be 67,446 in total countrywide.

The TSC Directors are to invite the ToTs recently retooled for teacher retooling, head teachers for both regular and SNE, the 3 regular teachers for retooling, teachers from Special schools to the selected integrated school for the training.

They are also required to invite teachers from private schools and inform them to cater for expenses on transport, meals and accommodation; and also identify and prepare appropriate training venues.

Last year TSC trained 60,000 secondary school teachers on CBC to handle the first cohort of 1.2 million JSS learners who joined Grade Seven. The training began on April, 2022.

TSC CEO Nancy Macharia said the training will be continuing to support all teachers and equip them with the necessary skills to effectively deliver CBC.

All field officers and CSOs were also trained on CBC to understand the curriculum and be able to give instructional support during the implementation of the competency-based curriculum.