For years, teachers who spent time training school teams, directing verse choirs and mentoring young scientists have felt that their efforts counted for little when promotion time came.
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The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) now appears to be changing that, with a new data-capture framework for co-curricular achievement and a revised Career Progression Guidelines (CPG) that is expected to reward teachers who go beyond the classroom.
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A memo that sets the ground rules
The clearest signal came in a memo dated 9th February from the then Director of Staffing, Antonina Lentoijoni.
It directed County Directors to develop, maintain and regularly update an accurate and comprehensive database of teachers who excel in mainstream co-curricular activities at various education levels.
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The memo left no room for discretion. “The database shall be used by the Commission whenever required to support planning, recognition, and other teacher management interventions. Compliance is mandatory, and the records must be readily available upon request,” Lentoijoni wrote.
The directive covers sports, drama and film, music, and the Kenya Science and Engineering Fair (KSEF). Each teacher is to be recorded by discipline, education level, role and level of participation.
Sports. In primary, junior school, senior school and Special Needs Education (SNE) institutions, and separately in Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), the database will record coaches of teams that finished in positions one, two and three, as well as coaches of position-one composite activities. Referees, umpires and technical officials are also to be captured.
Drama and film. Across primary, junior school, senior school, SNE institutions and TTCs, the records will include directors, producers and adjudicators.
Music. For the Kenya National Music Festivals, directors and adjudicators will be recorded at all the same levels of education.
Science and engineering. For KSEF, the database will list advisors and mentors, project directors, technical officials and judges.
The scope matters. Recognition is not limited to the coach whose team lifts a trophy. Referees, adjudicators and technical officials, whose work keeps competitions running but rarely earns applause, are explicitly included.
What each record must contain
The memo is specific about the data. TSC wants the information to be accurate, complete, current and verifiable.
Each record must show the teacher’s TSC number, their name as it appears on the birth certificate, their institution and level, their county, their discipline and specific role, the position achieved, and the level of participation.
Five levels of participation are recognised: sub-county, county, regional, national and East African.
A teacher whose learners reached the East African stage will therefore be distinguishable on paper from one whose team won at sub-county level, and the database will say so.
County Directors have also been told to maintain the database annually and to submit the records to the Commission whenever required.
That annual cycle means achievements should not be lost between promotion exercises, which has been a persistent complaint among games teachers.
Why teachers were frustrated
The new database follows a long period of uncertainty. TSC once promoted teachers with exemplary performance in outdoor activities such as sports, science congresses and drama.
That practice ended when the Commission abandoned the Schemes of Service and adopted the Career Progression Guidelines, which set out a different way of advancing teachers.
Under the CPG, co-curricular certificates carried little weight. At promotion interviews, a teacher who presented such certificates was awarded only two marks.
Things got worse in the January and February 2025 promotion interviews, when TSC, for the first time, removed recognition of sports certificates from the interview scoresheets entirely.
Instead, scores were awarded to teachers who invigilated, supervised and marked national examinations and assessments, a move meant to encourage participation in those exercises.
The reaction was sharp. Teachers who had won recognition in sports, drama, agriculture and science competitions felt their work had been discounted.
In 2025, games teachers, through their sports bodies, wrote to TSC demanding that their certificates be recognised at promotion interviews.
The matter was also raised at games teachers’ clinics, where participants said the Commission had discredited them.
Officials of the Kenya Primary Schools Sports Association (KPSSA) and the Kenya Secondary School Sports Association (KSSA) asked TSC to review the promotion scoresheet to include games and sports accolades.
The database is TSC’s answer to that pressure. It is a shift from a model in which a certificate earned a token mark to one in which a verified, searchable record of a teacher’s contribution sits on file with the Commission.
A new CPG awaiting release
The changes will be captured in a new TSC CPG, which has undergone job evaluation. Teachers are now waiting for its release, and expectations are high.
Acting TSC Chief Executive Officer Evaleen Mitei has indicated that teachers’ ability to inject their talents into the curriculum will be an important consideration under the proposed career structure.
In practical terms, teachers who nurture learners’ abilities beyond ordinary classroom instruction, produce excellent academic results and excel in co-curricular activities are likely to have an advantage when competing for promotion.
The proposed changes represent a significant departure from the current system, in which years of service and time spent in a particular grade have traditionally featured prominently in career advancement.
Under the proposed structure, what a teacher does with those years is expected to count for more than how many there are.
Ruto’s promotion announcement
The timing of these reforms is notable because of what President William Ruto announced on Monday, 5th October 2026.
Speaking during World Teachers Day celebrations at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, before thousands of teachers, he said the number of teachers promoted each year will rise from the current 34,016 to 50,000 beginning in the next financial year, 2027/2028.
He said the government will increase the budget for teacher promotions to make the higher number possible.
The announcement drew loud applause from the stadium. For teachers who have waited a decade or more for an upgrade, it signals that the bottleneck in the profession may be about to ease.
The President noted that the number of teachers promoted has already risen to 34,016, which he described as the biggest number promoted by TSC in a single year.
Expanding the number of promotions also raises the stakes for how the criteria are written. When roughly 16,000 additional slots become available each year, the question of who gets them, and on what basis, becomes more consequential.
A clear, transparent scoring system that recognises co-curricular excellence could help ensure the extra promotions go to teachers whose contributions can be shown and verified.
Part of a wider push for performance
The proposed shift is consistent with the government’s wider drive to make performance and productivity central to the management of public servants.
On May 11, 2026, Public Service Commission Secretary and Chief Executive Officer Paul Famba stressed the importance of mainstreaming performance and productivity at the opening of a five-day training at Commission House in Nairobi.
Famba said productivity mainstreaming was essential to embedding a culture of high performance throughout public service institutions.
He stressed that public servants and institutions needed to demonstrate commitment to efficiency, accountability and measurable results in delivering services to citizens.
He also indicated that the era of promotions without clear evidence of performance and productivity was coming to an end.
That position reinforces the government’s direction of linking career progression to demonstrable contribution rather than relying primarily on the passage of time.
For teachers, the proposed CPG could translate that policy into a framework suited to the realities of the profession.
Teaching performance is not limited to examination results. It includes curriculum delivery, learner development, professional conduct, innovation, mentorship and contributions to the wider school community.
A framework that captures this range could encourage teachers to demonstrate a broader set of professional achievements when competing for higher grades.
What this means for teachers
For games teachers, the database offers a route back into the promotion conversation after the setback of 2025. A coach whose team has finished in the top three at county, regional or national level now has a mechanism for that achievement to be formally recorded. The same applies to referees and technical officials, whose roles are named in the memo.
For music and drama teachers, the framework gives similar clarity. Directors, producers and adjudicators at the Kenya National Music Festivals and in drama and film are recognised as distinct roles, each with a place in the records.
Their work, often done after lessons and on weekends, is now part of the data TSC says it will use for planning and recognition.
For science teachers, the inclusion of KSEF advisors, mentors, project directors, technical officials and judges extends the same logic to innovation.
A teacher who guides learners to a national science fair is doing curriculum-enriching work, and the new approach appears to treat it that way.
Teachers will not be passive in this process. Because the records must be verifiable, those who take part in competitions should keep certificates, programmes, result sheets and any official correspondence confirming their role and level of participation.
Teachers should also check that their institution and County Director’s office have captured their details correctly, since the quality of the database will depend on the accuracy of what is entered.
Questions that remain
Even with the promise of change, some questions are still open, and teachers will be watching the release of the new CPG closely.
The first is weighting. The memo establishes how data will be captured, but it does not say how many marks or what advantage a given achievement will carry at an interview
A record of national-level success is only as valuable as the score attached to it, and teachers will want to see that the figure is meaningful, particularly given the earlier experience of two marks for certificates and then none.
The second is balance. Teachers who work in schools with limited facilities, small staff or few opportunities to reach higher competition levels could be disadvantaged if co-curricular achievement is weighted heavily.
A fair framework will have to account for the diverse circumstances in which teachers work, so that rewarding excellence does not make it harder for equally dedicated teachers in poorly resourced schools to compete
The third is the place of classroom teaching itself. The Commission’s stated interest in teachers who produce excellent academic results alongside co-curricular success suggests that the core task will remain central.
The challenge will be to ensure the new system rewards genuine excellence while maintaining fairness, transparency and equal opportunity across the teaching service.
A turning point
Taken together, the memo, the signals from the acting CEO, the President’s promotion pledge and the broader government emphasis on performance point in one direction.
TSC is moving towards a promotion system that looks at what teachers actually contribute, in the classroom, on the field, on the stage and at the science fair.
For many teachers, particularly games, music and drama teachers who felt overlooked in 2025, that will be welcome news.
Whether it becomes a lasting reform will depend on the details of the new CPG and on how consistently counties capture and verify the data.
For now, teachers are waiting. When the guidelines are released, they will show whether the recognition promised in the memo carries real weight on the promotion scoresheet.