TSC on the Munavu Recommendations.
Raphael Munavu’s team’s educational reform recommendations may be at risk after the Teachers Service Commission sharply criticized several of their suggestions.
The TSC has accused the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms (PWPER) of attempting to weaken it by depriving it of its supervisory and managerial responsibilities over its staff in a brief to the Parliamentary Departmental Committee on Education.
TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia accused the reforms team of failing to interact with the commission on teacher management concerns before writing its final report as directed by the State House in the paper handed to the MPs in Mombasa.
According to Dr Macharia, while other significant stakeholders were invited to the report validation meeting, TSC was not. The team neglected to invite the employer while inviting other institutions and left it off the list of organizations that submitted memoranda, ignoring the commission’s opinion on crucial issues impacting teachers.
According to Dr. Macharia, if adopted as written, the report would revoke the commission’s constitutional authority, rob it of its independence, and necessitate constitutional modifications by popular initiative.
The commission explicitly calls one recommendation flawed because it disregards the commission’s ongoing teacher training upgrades and gives the Education Ministry authority to create guidelines for how all teachers who graduated before 2023 must complete a one-year curriculum upgrading program. Additionally, it limits teachers’ employment options and modifies the registration criteria outlined in the Code of Regulation for Teachers.
The TSC believes that providing Jogoo House the authority to evaluate entrance requirements for pre-service teaching courses would amount to a usurpation of the commission’s constitutional power. As a result, it disagrees with the recommendation that provides the ministry the sole authority to do so.
The reforms team recommended new entry grades for teachers in several areas. Still, the commission claims these suggestions are incompatible with the TSC’s current registration criteria and endangers the subject-cluster method.
The recommendation of the reforms team that instructs the minister to create a comprehensive school system, where all learning levels, from pre-primary, grade 1 to grade 9, are controlled as a single institution, is another contentious contribution.
According to TSC, this would raise the number of headteachers, necessitate a review of the career development rules, and cause additional spending, which would result in a higher budgetary provision for the commission. It would also expand the commission’s authority to include control of pre-primary education, a county responsibility.
Read also: Ministry of Education to Assume TSC Responsibilities
Although the TSC claims to have the institutional capacity to handle the move, it will only do so if the county governments agree to hand over control of their pre-primary teachers.
According to TSC, Parliament must also create a supportive legal framework for establishing comprehensive schools.
The reforms team also instructed the TSC to begin providing pre-service training graduates in education with the option of required one-year internship programs. The commission claims this would interfere with its current internship program, cost more money to engage all graduates and compel a change in registration standards.
To synchronize teacher management standards on deployment, promotions, and teacher welfare, the PWPER states that TSC shall do so moving forward in consultation with the ministry. The TSC, however, rejects it, claiming that teacher management tactics are its sole domain.
The commission’s authority and operational independence will be usurped by the recommendation to share this job with another organization. Additionally, it will make the current policies ineffective, produce ambiguity, and cause conflicts in institutional administration.
In response to a recommendation that the ministry stop classifying schools as National, Extra-County, County, and Sub-County in favor of career pathways, TSC claims that this would require a redistribution of teachers based on their competencies and generate a demand for more instructors for new learning areas.
The committee also objects to a suggestion that the university senates continue to set the conditions for entry to the B. Ed. program because it could prevent consistent grading of the teaching degree.
The reform team’s decree that the function of quality assurance and standards be the only function of the ministry and that the commission should limit its mandate to the teacher as a professional and employee within the performance evaluation framework and not quality assurance is another recommendation that the TSC finds contentious.
The Teaching Service Commission (TSC) claims that this would negatively impact the commission’s role as an employer and its ability to promote, reward, mentor, coach, and discipline its workers. Education quality will suffer if the government scraps the commission’s responsibility for overseeing teachers.
The reforms team was asking Jogoo House to directly supervise and control the commission, which would have to give up its control over its employees concerning supervision and professional development, by stating that the TSC has no role in schools and that it should request authorization from the ministry before dealing with any teachers.
According to Dr. Macharia, some of the PWPER’s suggestions call for constitutional changes via a public initiative and statute law. According to the commission’s carefully thought-out request, keeping such clauses will not only impact the TSC’s mandate. Still, it will also make it more challenging to govern the teaching service effectively.
TSC on the Munavu Recommendations.