This year, 36,000 instructors will be hired, half of whom will be hired for a one-year internship and the remaining half for permanent and pensionable positions.
Hon. Julius Melly, a Tinderet member of parliament and the chair of the National Assembly’s Education Committee, made this revelation. In the 2025/2026 Budget Policy Statement (BPS), Melly has requested that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) budget ceiling of Shs. 382.3 billion be approved.
In front of the Liaison Committee, which was chaired by Hon. Gladys Boss (Uasin Gishu MP), Hon.
Melly underlined that the funding would allow TSC to hire 18,000 permanent secondary school teachers, hire 18,000 intern teachers, and promote 20,000 instructors.
“These recruitments and promotions will continue to address the gaps in teaching resources as well as motivate teachers in terms of career progression,” said Hon. Melly.
He also highlighted critical funding gaps in the education sector, urging the Committee to allocate additional resources, including Kshs. 6.3 billion for Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) for university staff.
Kshs. 20.9 billion for capitation, scholarships, and loans for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students, including the 2024 cohort joining institutions in 2025.
Kshs. 890 million for the construction of TVET institutions in constituencies that lack such facilities.
In January the Grade 9 learners will transition to senior school. This is an early preparation by TSC to ensure adequate staffing ahead of the transition.
The mass employment will help to address the unemployment menace facing the teaching service.
Around 354,234 teachers who graduated with certificates, diplomas and degree are yet to be employed by TSC.
Already TSC has replacement exercise for 8,707 teaching slots it advertised in November last year.
In the replacements which is on permanent and pensionable terms TSC declared 5,862 posts for primary schools, 21 posts for junior schools and 2,824 posts for secondary schools.
The Commission has started to issue successful teachers with appointment letters. A total of 1,645 junior secondary school (JSS) intern teachers secured replacement jobs in secondary schools.
TSC has started the process that will see JSS intern teachers get replaced. These are part of the 20,000 JSS intern teachers recruited and posted to schools in January.
In junior secondary TSC has a total of 76,928 teachers employed since 2022 to handle Grade 7,8 and 9 classes.
TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia said the Commission requires a total of 149,350 teachers to handle these three JSS classes.
The 76,928 employed constitutes the 39,550 JSS teachers who were confirmed on permanent and pensionable terms in January 2025.
8,378 P1 teachers who were deployed to junior secondary in the last two years and 9,000 junior secondary school teachers recruited on permanent and pensionable terms.
It also includes the 20,000 JSS intern teachers hired in January this year at a cost of sh 4.8 billion.
The recruitment of the 20,000 JSS intern teachers prioritized those with science combination after it emerged that many JSS schools lacked science teachers and those with technical subjects.
Macharia said TSC has so far retooled a total of 229,292 teachers on CBC and CBA since April 2019.
She said a total of 60,642 JSS teachers have been retooled from May 2023 to November 2024.
TSC plans to deploy primary school teachers to JSS in April this year to help address teacher shortage.
The online application for the deployment of the 6,000 P1 teachers to JSS is currently ongoing.
The Commission has been deploying P1 teachers since 2019 as a form of promotion after numerous complaints of stagnation from primary school teachers who upgraded their academic certificates.
In 2019, 2020 and 2021 a total of 1,000 P1 teachers were deployed each year to secondary schools while in 2022 to 2024 around 8,378 teachers were deployed to serve the first cohorts of the CBC in JSS.
Recently officials of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) urged TSC to drop its hard stance on academic requirements for deploying P1 teachers to JSS for the sake of learners.
Instead TSC was asked to retool the PTE teachers and allow them teach the Grade 7, 8 and 9 learners.
In the deployment exercise TSC wants practicing P1 teachers to have degree in secondary option with at least C+ in KCSE and at least C+ in two teaching subjects.
The Commission has been criticized for overlooking P1 teachers who are best suited to teach subjects such as Music, Art and Craft, P.E which JSS teachers are struggling with.
The deployment of the 6,000 primary school teachers will be based on subject combinations popularly known as subject clusters.