Last week, I handled two cases that made it clearer to me that acute shortage of teachers presents challenges of comprehensive curriculum implementation in junior secondary school (JSS) — Grades 7, 8 and 9.
As a teacher of English and Literature in English, I gave a hand to a friend’s child, who is in Grade 9, in identifying the poetic imagery in Samuel Kinyariro’s poem "Daughter of Nature". The strong images of care, connection and protection are key in understanding the poem and its emphasis on values like selfless patriotism, care and environmental conservation. This engagement is symptomatic of existing staffing challenges that cannot be overlooked since it affects learner competency and development.
My second encounter with teaching practice coordinators and university students seeking opportunities for teaching practice indicts education stakeholders in terms of jointly planning and re-calibrating programmes to manifest the reality of competence-based curriculum.
Secondary schools are currently unable to absorb all students in the May-August teaching practice cycle -- a time when nearly all universities release students for the programme. No one seems to have planned around the reality of not having form one students this year. Teaching practice is traditionally concentrated in Form 1 and 2.
Universities cannot exonerate themselves from the mismatch in pedagogy if remarks by one of the coordinators are anything to by. The current assessment tools are not fully tailored towards JSS.
This explains why all the students I tried to refer to the nearby schools for the JSS were unwilling to practise in those sections. We failed to plan for and make the most of this surplus in human resource to tackle some of the challenges of acute understaffing.
Universities enjoy considerable autonomy in designing their programmes. However, the Commission for University Education (CUE) owes the country a strategic stewardship that reflects our gradual systematic shift to the CBC curriculum. This must be seen in human resource development.
Latest data from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) reveals that 51.5 percent of the expected 149,350 teachers are currently serving in JSS and are expected to birth out career pathways for all learners. The commission has continued to bridge instructional knowledge gap through staggered retooling of tutors, the latest being in December 2024.
