KUPPET Issues Demands to Govt for Failing to Promote 100,000 Teachers

The Kenya National Union of Post-Primary Teachers (KUPPET) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) have criticised the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) for promoting only a limited number of teachers, falling short of their expectations and prior agreements.

Speaking at an event in Kericho over the weekend, KNUT’s First National Vice Chairperson, Malel Lang’at, termed the promotion of 25,288 teachers as insufficient to address career stagnation and professional growth across the country.

Echoing his concerns, KUPPET’s Kericho Branch Executive, Mary Rotich, stated that the union had anticipated at least 130,000 promotions, emphasising the need for more opportunities to support teachers’ career advancement.

”We have many teachers who have qualified for promotion but the Teachers Service Commission is still sitting on the same. Even the recent promotions where they claimed to have promoted the same,” Lang’at stated.

”The TSC instead of promoting teachers professionally, there is politicization of employment in this country,” he added. 

The criticisms came following recent calls made on January 30 where KUPPET officials took an issue with the criteria used to allocate the promotion slots terming in the country.

The union also faulted the Commission for distributing the slots unequally across all counties. As a result, the protestors demanded the Commission to fill the available slots on a pro-rata basis. 

“We want to see the commission allocate proportionately the slots of promotion which means the counties that have gotten the highest number of teachers must get the highest number of slots so that we act fairly in terms of spreading,” Moses Nthurima, KUPPET Secretary General revealed.

“For that, we are demanding that the Teachers Service Commission use pro-rata to ensure that teachers are treated equally,” he added.

TSC conducts teacher promotions in Kenya through a structured process based on merit, experience, and available vacancies.

Additionally, the commission uses the Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) tool, available vacancies, and affirmative action to help regions that are marginalized as some of the considerations to undertake promotions. 

According to TSC, lower job groups benefit from automatic advancements based on years of service, senior positions require interviews and performance evaluations. 

However, the teachers unions argue that the current promotion structure has left many teachers stagnating in the same job groups for years, urging TSC to implement a more inclusive and transparent promotion framework.