Private universities to suffer huge blow as TSC to revert to Teachers Training Colleges
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has hinted at discontinuing refresher courses to secondary school teachers and instead revert to the existing Teacher Training Colleges to run the programme.
While appearing before the National Assembly Education committee, TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia told MPs that it is considering discarding the use of the four universities that were accredited to offer the short courses known as the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) training.
According to Macharia, the decision by the commission targets to address costs and other logistical challenges that it faced in the rolling out of the programme.
“In view of the feedback from teachers and other stakeholders, the commission is in consultation with the Ministry of education to use the existing teacher training colleges as centres for capacity building and professional development programmes for teachers. This will address the issue of costs and other logistical challenges the commission has faced in rolling out the programme,” she said.
The four universities currently offering the training are Mt Kenya, Kenyatta and Riara universities and the Kenya Education Management Institute.
The contract awarded to the four universities is expected to come to an end in September this year besides the TSC’s failure to implement the process.
She however defended the private universities saying they were accredited to offer the said programme after they applied for the tender.
“We did not lock out anyone from this tender, we advertised and institutions applied, I don’t know why some of these universities did not apply. It is regrettable that some of these institu tions did not apply because it would have been very helpful to teachers as they would not have been forced to travel to get the training,” she said while referring to public universities who did not tender for the said exercise.
Top universities like Egerton, Maseno, Jomo Kenyatta, University of Agriculture and Technology, University of Nairobi, Masinde Muliro University, Kisii University were not selected to offer the TPD courses.
