Teachers Training Colleges (TTCs) tutors can be considered one of the forgotten groups in the teaching service since a large percentage of them have stagnated in the same job group for years.
The 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) had good proposals for this group of tutors, which Teachers Service Commission (TSC) disregarded despite many attempts by Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) to make it honour its proposal.
The CBA had proposed that all the TTC tutors serving as Lecturer I, which is Job Group C3, should be automatically promoted to Senior Lecturer IV, which is Job Group C4.
Efforts by both the tutors and KUPPET to ensure this is done haven’t yielded any fruit, implying that TSC did not fully implement the previous CBA. When the 2017 CBA came into effect, tutors who had previously served as administrators in secondary schools but were later deployed to TTCs suffered a great deal.
Those who were in the then Job Group ‘M’ were taken to Job Group ‘C4’ while their counterparts who were serving as administrators in secondary schools were moved to Job Group ‘D3’. In essence, it will take these tutors over 15 years to reach the scale where their secondary school peers were taken.
In the Teachers Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) rolled out by TSC, the highest grade a lecturer can go is D2. Surprisingly no tutor is serving in D1 or D2 in the country’s TTCs! Those who were deployed to these colleges from primary and secondary schools have made several requests to be taken back, but the commission is unwilling to do so.
These tutors were recently in charge of retooling all primary school head teachers and Junior Secondary School (JSS) teachers. Surprisingly, the head teachers, who are a product of these tutors, are earning more than them! As from August this year, all primary school head teachers, their deputies, senior teachers and classroom teachers will be undertaking an upgrade programme called Upgrade in Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (UDPTE), formerly P1, which the same demoralized tutors will be in charge of.
The tutors’ situation hasn’t improved even with the signing of the 2021-2025 CBA. In the recently advertised positions where the Commission is targeting to promote over 13,000 teachers, there were no positions for these tutors across the 35 public TTCs since the commission only advertised 7 posts for Chief Principal, which is an administrative position.
These tutors have recently put forth proposals for consideration by the employer, which they are sure will improve their welfare and raise their morale.
These proposals include: a scheme of service for tutors developed by TSC to be in place, the position of the Chief Principal be renamed as Director and be promoted to the grade of Ministry of Education Director.
