Teachers are facing mass transfers as the employer announced plans to balance staffing across schools.
Teachers Service Commission (TSC) Chief Executive Nancy Macharia said the process will be done with a human face and will end by May 9.
Dr Macharia said TSC seeks to have a proportionate number of teachers in public schools after it emerged that some schools were understaffed while others had more than required teachers.
This means that schools with more teachers will have some of their tutors transferred to understaffed schools.
According to the commission, the exercise aims to improve on the teacher to learner ratio. The mass transfer is set to conclude before schools open.
This even as she disclosed that there was a shortage of 114,581 teachers in primary and post-primary institutions.
She linked the shortage of tutors to increased enrolment arising from the high number of school-age children, the 100 per cent transition policy and registration of new schools.
Dr Macharia said that despite the shortage, the commission was determined to ensure prudent and fair distribution of the existing teachers in both primary and secondary schools.
“From time to time, we have had to review staffing placements to ensure no part of our country is disadvantaged in terms of sharing the limited teaching resources,” she added.
Dr Macharia assured teachers that the exercise will be conducted humanely while ensuring adequate consultations with relevant officers.
“The commission will shortly be asking our field officers to conduct a routine exercise of assessing their sub-counties to ensure that all schools have balanced teacher to learner ratios ahead of the start of the new academic calendar,” she explained.
TSC said it has been recruiting 5,000 teachers annually to match the increased enrolment in public schools.
The government has been pushing for 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary schools.
The full transition policy has occasioned registration of new schools to accommodate the swelling number of learners in the public institutions.
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