School mapping crucial in teacher hiring

Prof Eric Hoyle, in his book, The Politics of School Management, asserted that “the incumbent of any leadership role in any organisation is a modern day Sisyphus, constantly pushing uphill a backward rolling boulder in an effort to mobilise people and resources and move them towards an ever receding peak.”

On matters to do with teacher demand in the country, both the leadership of the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) and the Treasury find themselves in the position mythical Sisyphus held considering that there is a demand of close to 100,000 teachers that TSC cannot possibly employ at once.

But who was Sisyphus? In Greek mythology, “there existed the king of Ephyra known as Sisyphus. He was punished for his self-aggrandising craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down when it nears the top, repeating this action for eternity.

Today, tasks that are both laborious and futile are described as Sisyphean.

The TSC, through no fault of its own, finds itself performing the Sisyphean task of unsuccessfully attempting to meet the ever-increasing demand of employing teachers. How did the government find itself in this situation? A look through statistics on educational development would help to clarify this issue.

According to the sessional paper on Reforming Educational and Training for Sustainable Development (December 2018) now before the National Assembly, the number of public and private primary schools increased from 6,058 in 1963 to 35,442 in 2017, while the number of secondary schools increased from 151 to 10,665 over the same period.

Enrolment in primary education grew from 891,103 pupils in 1963 to about 10.4 million pupils in 2017, while enrolment in secondary schools grew from about 30,000 students in 1963 to approximately 2.8 million in 2017.

These statistics indicate that primary schools increased by 585 per cent between 1963 and 2017 and secondary schools by 7,000 per cent over the same period.

This is an increase of 11 per cent of schools in the primary school level and 130 per cent at the secondary school level on an annual basis. This rate or increase of schools requires an equivalent rate of increase of teachers to meet the demand.

Further, these statistics indicate that by 2017, there were an average of 294 pupils in every primary school and 263 students in every secondary school. This implies that there were close to 18,000 primary schools with 294 pupils or less and over 5,000 secondary schools with 263 students or less requiring a full complement of teachers and yet they are under enrolled.

This implies that about half the schools are not cost-effective in terms of utilisation of teachers and infrastructure.

The growth of both enrolment and number of schools exponentially brings to question the method of establishment of schools. Setting up of new schools or increasing the number of streams in existing ones is normally demand-driven.

The communities would push for this to happen and mobilise resources for doing so through their elected and community leaders.

Upon setting up these new schools or increasing streams, they would ask for teachers from the TSC that would in turn request for the necessary finances from the Treasury.

At no time through this process are the TSC and the Treasury involved or consulted in order to prepare them for the resources required of them as per their mandate.

The TSC, therefore, cannot with certainty, project the staff requirements in the Medium Term Expenditure Framework as would be expected of them. A better approach that increases the level of certainty in the estimates of teacher demands needs to be instituted.

School mapping would be one such approach.

This is the development of a map of schools within a geographical area. Whereas school mapping has been carried out in Kenya, it has mainly been to identify the location of existing schools rather than identify the most cost-effective location of setting up new schools or increasing the streams in existing schools.

There is need to carry out a constituency specific school mapping exercise since the National Government Constituency Development Fund has a major impact on the establishment of schools.

However, the Treasury, the TSC, the Ministry of Education, the Kenya Bureau of Statistics and the National Government Constituency Development Fund would have to be involved in this exercise.

There will be need also to sensitise the members of the National and county Assemblies of the need for school mapping in order to buy in their support for this important exercise.

It is time the government took a stronger, well thought-out approach to the setting up of schools since it provides the teachers and pays capitation to enrolled students to increase cost effectiveness in education.

It is a more accurate and scientific approach to social services that is already in use in provision of polling stations and transformers.

This is the promise of school mapping.