Let us begin this way – by way of two pieces of speculation. The first, perhaps the most obvious one, is that Teachers Service Commission (TSC) CEO, Nancy Macharia is way more qualified for the job than I am. That is why she is the CEO of TSC, and I am not. So, while I may from time to time find space to make noise in the newspapers, she does not – not because she cannot write; but because she spends her time making the big decisions that have got grave ramifications to the teaching and learning public. One of those decisions is this week’s announcement of Teacher Professional Development Programme (TPD).
Speculation number two: anyone in
this country, with an IQ about double digits, will most certainly agree that
head of KUPPET (Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers) and the head of KNUT
(Kenya National Union of Teachers) have interests of teachers at heart, than I
would be expected to have. After all, teachers entrusted them with
responsibility to vouch for their welfare. They voted for them in their
thousands.
This love for their members must have
been evident when Misori of KUPPET and Oyuu of KNUT, went to assist the TSC
announce a very important matter: the need to retrain teachers and issue them
with licenses. It must have been because of this love that earlier in the year,
the two unions signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that had zero
financial increment. They however lovingly bargained for more paternity leave. They
now assume that teachers will now very easily retrieve money from the increased
paternity leave, and use it to pay for retraining.
After many months of defending the
Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) saying that teachers have been well trained,
it took the sunshine of 22nd September, 2021 for the TSC to admit
that indeed teachers shall need retraining for five years, at their own cost,
to be able to make CBC a success. Forget that Kenyan teachers have been so
attractive to foreign nations, who have come for them to go and teach their
children. Forget that the Ministry of Education (MoE) has severally said that
teachers do not need lengthy training to deliver CBC. What you should remember
is that a few universities have been selected (or is it (hand)picked?) to offer
the retraining.
By her own admission during the
announcement for the TPD programme, CEO Macharia observed that teachers will be
given an opportunity to attend the retraining in their localities. It must
therefore be taken as purely accidental that all the institutions picked for
this programme are in the Nairobi Metropolitan area. It must also be treated as
a matter of pure hindsight that of the four: Mount Kenya University, Riara
University, Kenyatta University and Kenya Institute of Management, there is
only one public university. We must not stoop too low to questioning this
arrangement, but we must wonder how cheaper it might have been for teachers at
the Coast, North Eastern and Western to attend the said programme in their
regions.
The MoE, TSC and some voices in the
general public have supported the idea of retraining and periodic of licensing
teachers. They have compared teaching to Law, and have wondered why teachers
should not have additional training like lawyers do when they attend the Kenya
School of Law (KSL) for example. What they forget is that in the Kenya School
of Law, lawyers learn issues of methodology; which thing trainee teachers are
trained on at university and teacher training colleges, before they compound
the training by going on teaching practice.
In teacher training institutions, the
programmes are designed in such a way that the methodology training, which lawyers
undergo at the Kenya School of Law is undertaken by teacher trainees in the
course of their studies and training in teacher training institutions within
three or four years before graduation. At the Kenya School of Law, for example,
lawyers are taken through Advocate Training Programme (ATP) where they are
engaged on the nitty gritties of methodology such as: how to dress, how to
stand before a judge, make opening remarks, concluding remarks, draw judgments,
and gather information from judgments read.
At the end of one year, these lawyers
proceed on a six month practicum, which they call pupillage. Here, they work
under an established advocate (pupil master) with the trainees as pupils. This
is a replica of what happens during teacher training. Before teacher trainees
proceed on to one term’s practicum – called Teaching Practice – they will have
been taught how to present themselves before class, how to dress, draw lesson
plans, schemes of work, make introductory remarks, build up the lesson and make
concluding remarks. It is therefore lazy (for lack of a better word) for anyone
one to say that extra training after graduation is needed to make teachers more
proficient as lawyers after a diploma at Kenya School of Law.
The quality of the Kenyan teacher may
not be in dire straits, contrary to what the Union officials and TSC sought to
portray when announcing the upcoming reforms. We have Kenyan teachers working
abroad, and they are not retrained for years upon going there. Recently, there
was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) for which Kenyan
teachers were being sought to go and teach English and Kiswahili in America.
This would not be the case, if the USA knew that they were trooping ill-trained
teachers to go and teach American children.
We have had this country sign
agreements to have Kenyan teachers go to Seychelles and Rwanda. Even if improving
the quality of teacher training was the issue, the matter of lengthy and
punitive training period needed looking into. For even, on the issue of cost,
the cost goes higher when you consider issues such as transport and
accommodation for the length of the retraining. Besides, it is impossible to
forget that this very TSC, under this very CEO, came up with reforms that
frustrated many teachers and stopped them from going for further studies during
holidays.
As for KNUT and KUPPET, it is all
strategic to be diplomatic with the TSC after former Secretary General of KNUT
Wilson Sossion was frustrated out of office in the manner he was. However, the
brutal reality is that unionism should be the antithesis of the employer’s
demands and directives. A union should be sceptical of the employer’s whims,
and wary, in the same way ice is to heat.
Even if KUPPET and KNUT had to be
diplomatic and play ball in a calculated way, it would have been better to
negotiate on who is to fund the retraining. For as you all know, it is
impossible for teachers to pay for it using the increased paternity leave that the
two unions won for them – for paternity leave is the only thing they achieved
in the otherwise zero CBA they calmly signed.
