In a statement from the Teachers Service Commission, the CEO, Dr Nancy Macharia said that they will not relent on it’s stand concerning the admission requirements for those students who would wish to join the teaching profession.
This came in after the TSC boss said that some of the letters they received from teachers, contained a lot of spelling mistakes.
Reuben Nathamburi who is the commission’s Director of Quality Assurance and Standards said that their aim is to professionalise the teaching profession to resemble professions like law, medicine and engineering. He said that the universities have already received a report on what kind of a teacher they want.
He further cited some of the challenges they are facing as a commission. One of them being, communication from teachers is not effective due to the lowered grades by the Kenya University and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS). C plain for both mathematics and English.
In a note presented to Dr Nathamburi, the present challenges the commission is experiencing presently is that, teachers cannot write or speak fluently. This is according to the letters they are writing to the commission since they have several spelling mistakes.
Dr. Nathamburi represented the TSC boss Dr Nancy Macharia in a meeting held in Naivasha that was chaired by Dr Ellis from the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development. In that meeting Dr Nathamburi stressed that for teaching to be professionalised just like other professions, the entry requirements should be followed whereby there is need to introduce the Training Teacher Professional Development after which they will think on how teachers will be motivated.
Nathamburi urged universities to understand emerging issues and the new areas in education so that they can align their content as expected.
He further said that they will go and meet all vice Chancellor and faculty deans to discuss how they will align their courses with a policy tilted framework and entry requirements that was prepared by Dr Nathamburi on teaching profession.
According to this policy, the commission aims to reform the bachelor of education programme which is one of the most popular courses offered in almost all universities in our country and replace it with bachelor of arts(BA) or science (BSC) with a postgraduate diploma in education (PGD).
According to the the commission’s views, universities should start offering the programme that will take three years and an extra one year for PGD in September this year. Meaning, the commission will only employ teachers after successful completion of a professional postgraduate diploma.
This will have an entry mean grade of B- with an average grade of a C+ in any three teaching subjects.
