Counties should be allowed to hire ECD teachers

By NANCY KHISA

It is pertinent to ask where all those opposed to the recruitment of Early Childhood Education (ECD) teachers by county governments have been all these years when these able professionals remained unemployed despite being qualified.

For a long time, ECD teachers literally ‘begged’ to be recognised by the TSC in vain. The county governments only stepped in recently to fill this void, in recognition of the critical role played by the teachers, after they were left in the lurch by the system.

Ideally, TSC can do more to improve early childhood education standards by working with county governments rather than fighting them and this is what the governors want.

The TSC always had the non-exclusive mandate to hire ECD teachers, but only began to do so after the counties started recruiting these professionals. And even then, its offer is only a token, a drop in the ocean.

In the past, the excuse was that there were not enough funds allocated in the national government’s budget for this purpose. So one wonders where the money has come from all of sudden.

The Parliamentary Committee on Education has pushed for amendments to the Basic Education Act that gives county governments through the County Education Boards, oversight in the operation and management of pre-school and other education programmes. ECD teachers should not operate in a vacuum like has been the case.

Over the years they have been employed by individuals or school boards who have historically either underpaid them or not paid them at all.

Going by the current state of affairs, it would be unfair if stakeholders in the education sector opted to play politics with the livelihood of pre-school teachers just to gain some mileage.

The Mbooni MP Mr. Kisoi Munyao, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, has claimed that governors are taking advantage of the ambiguity in the law to employ ECD teachers, but neither does it give TSC the exclusive mandate to hire them.

Indeed, even if the latter were the case, the TSC does not have enough money to hire enough ECD teachers for every county. The county governments, among other things, are expected to improve the quality of education standards, and hiring ECD teachers is part of this.

Before the law is amended, it is only fair to allow the county governments work with the TSC in increasing the numbers of practicing ECD professionals in public schools.

The argument that county governments don’t have schemes of work is moot because these are prepared by the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) and not TSC, and are easily available.

While recognising that ECD teachers have been ignored for long, Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary General Wilson Sossion adds that the country requires at least 70,000 pre-school teachers to serve an estimated 3.5 million children. He wants the National Treasury to allocate more money to TSC to do this.

Sossion has condemned the move by county governments as unconstitutional, but the truth is that the union did little for trained ECD teachers over the years, and one can even hazard a guess that it is only keen on recruiting them as members to bolster its numbers.

The argument that has been missed by all stakeholders is that County Governments like any other Government would like to manage its wage bill among other expenditures and this is not an isolation.

I am sure that County Governments would be more than glad to offload the cost of the ECD teachers to the National Government at the appropriate time.

At the appropriate time when the TSC and the national Government feel they are ready and for the first time in 50 years they can recognise ECD teachers and have them in their structures, County Governments will be more than glad to hand over this responsibility to them.  

Ms Khisa is Head of Communications, Kakamega County Government