The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) responded with a requirement just one day after elementary school headteachers demanded that they be promoted from headteacher to principal grades.
Johnson Nzioka, the chairman of the Kenya Primary School Headteachers Association (KEPSHA), claims that head teachers are demanding higher compensation in line with their duties as administrators of the Junior Secondary School (JSS) housed in their institutions.
According to the Career Progression Guidelines (CPG), the junior secondary primary head teachers, who also serve as acting principals, would like to gradually advance from their current C5 grade to grade D1.
However TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia while addressing the headteachers in the KEPSHA conference in Mombasa said it will not be possible to promote the headteachers without a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Macharia said the headteachers should submit the proposal through the teachers unions for the issue to be addressed in the next CBA (2025 – 2029).
“We cannot review salaries without a formal Collective Bargaining Agreement,” Nancy Macharia told the primary school headteachers.
“With regard to additional responsibilities I have heard. These are additional responsibilities occasioned by implementation of CBC including management of junior school and noting that the same touches on terms and conditions of service. They (unions) have given us a memorandum of what we expect in the next CBA. Ask the unions to include this issue to be addressed in the CBA,” added Macharia.
TSC has been giving the headteachers one year contract (January to December) to the more than 10,000 headteachers hosting JSS in their schools to act as principals.
The contract has been renewed each year but now the headteachers want their title changed from headteacher to principal on permanent and pensionable terms.
The head teachers are also demanding to be compensated for the period that they have acted as managers of the Junior Secondary School.
“For the last two years, we were assigned additional responsibility to head JSS. However, the government did not factor that in salary enhancement,” said Nzioka.
They claim that managing so many students is putting them under a great lot of stress. Nzioka said, “Schools are understaffed as we lose some teachers to natural attrition, but the number of students keeps going up.”
When employees are overworked, we are unable to deliver high-quality instruction. Nzioka observed, “She (Dr. Macharia) needs to demonstrate how we ought to deal with the quantity of teachers in schools.”
In the past year, the government has hired 57,000 instructors in JSS, according to TSC. However, there will be 3.8 million students enrolled in schools by the following year.