TSC seems to have encroached on mandate of Education ministry

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut), Kenya Private Schools Association (Kepsa) and Kenya Association of International Schools (Kais) are right to ask the government to review the legal status of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).

Section 237 of the Constitution vests TSC with functions with the regulatory, employment and advisory dockets being explicit.

Regulatory functions include training of persons entering the profession, registering trained teachers and reviewing education standards. The employment ones are recruiting teachers, deploying, promoting and transferring public school or institution tutors, and disciplining and sacking teachers.

It also advises the national government on matters relating to the teaching profession.

The independent status of TSC is founded on the current Constitution. Before then, it was a semi-autonomous institution under the Education ministry, under the Minister for Education. Knut proposed the current status in exchange for mobilising teachers to back the 2005 constitutional referendum.

Instructively, there are several institutional, operational and strategic flaws with the way TSC has run its affairs since 2013. First, all its members and the CEO are teachers, yet its actions affect other sectors, in particular private schools.

Secondly, TSC is the employer. An independent body should regulate teachers’ practice and professional conduct, as well as their education and standards in colleges of education.

Thirdly, Section 11 of the TSC Act 2012 and the TSC Code of Regulations for Teachers 2015 encroach on the powers and functions of the Education Cabinet secretary. TSC incorporated the powers and functions of the CS in Schedule 4 of the Constitution and the Basic Education Act 2013.

That saw TSC virtually take over public primary and secondary schools and also — tragically — quality assurance and standards of the teaching and learning there.

But the greatest flaw in this naked usurpation of power by TSC is that it cannot act on the reports by the ministry’s Quality Assurance and Standards unit regarding the delivery of the curriculum and management of schools by teachers without independently verifying them.

Like in Zambia, TSC should recruit teachers for public primary and secondary schools for deployment by the ministry, under the Education CS, who, constitutionally, is responsible for education policy, standards, curricula, examinations, primary schools, special education, secondary schools and special education institutions.

The ministry would run schools and the teachers managing education and only liaise with the TSC on promotion, transfers and discipline of teachers if and when necessary.