Rethink guidelines in teacher recruitment

The decentralisation in teacher employment was a bold step in the quest for optimal human resource utilisation as it attempted to harmonise institutional needs and teacher recruitment.

However, a critical evaluation of the instrument used in selection and appointment reveals flaws that bring to the fore the question of its validity in engendering merit in the recruitment process.

First, mark distribution is skewed towards First Class degrees. While there is merit in loading much of the scores to the quality of certificate, we must bear in mind that there are many institutions of higher learning chartered to award degrees and certificates.

Competition for students

Due to competition for students, there is a possibility that some institutions are admitting average students through parallel mode and, eventually, most of them graduate with First Class or Upper Second Class honours. In most cases, the best performing students at KCSE join public universities and majority do not get a First Class degree.

Won’t we soon flood our schools with "First Class" degree teachers who scored a mean of C+ at KCSE and lock out our ‘A’ students who failed to score highly because they did not join some privately chartered university where anything other than quality counts?

We should consider the type of institution a teacher graduated from and possibly the mean score one had at KCSE in the selection and recruitment process.

passion for teaching

The second flaw is the weight given to the number of years after graduation. Having graduated earlier does not necessarily mean that one has a passion for being a teacher. Is there a possibility that this rule is succeeding in attracting individuals to the teaching profession who are least employable elsewhere? Teaching is a calling and there is a need to ensure that those we recruit have an interest in the profession.

Third, the guideline seems to effectively cut out diploma teachers from securing employment. The marks allocated to this cadre of teachers are too low to enable them compete favourably with their graduate counterparts. However, this group of teachers is competently trained to effectively handle secondary school curriculum.

Unless we streamline these anomalies, the present guidelines are likely to work counter to the merit and fairness for which they were intended.

{Anthony Sang, Njoro}