BY MWANAHABARI REPORTER
Although learning is ongoing in the over 30 Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) after the absorption of unemployed teachers on Monday, October 4, 2021 – many student teachers are disillusioned.
Some of the students have expressed shock at the rigorous curriculum – and the long training period they will have to endure for months before graduating – again.
“I can tell you that it’s not easy for most people here. Some of us are old men and women, and so we don’t have people paying school fees for us anymore, which means you have to be in school and still worry about raising money,” Richard* who first graduated from teachers college in 2015 told Mwanahabari.
“I have a wife and two children. My wife is currently in Nairobi – and by the look of things I may be forced to ask my relatives to help her relocate back to the village. At least there I will not have to pay rent,” added Richard* who left a stable teaching job at a private primary school in Nairobi to go back to TTC.
Richard who used to earn Ksh15,000 says he has no dead what the family is eating – at the moment.
He adds: “Looking back, I probably should have taken sometime to think it over… before coming here just like that. Now I don’t have a job, my family cannot eat and dress – and I have no money to pay school fees.”
“My advise to people out there is that they should make sure they make plans financially to ensure their stay in the college is smooth.”
Reports indicated that part of the learning includes a nine-week teaching practice exercise that will form part of the examinations – and the teachers are already wondering why they even need this.
Although the Ministry wants the learners to undertake teaching practice in their respective village schools – apparently to cushion them from economic challenges – many are still worried.
Vitoria said: “I must says that TSC and the Ministry of Education have mistreated teachers… and more so unemployed teachers. I wonder who makes such archaic and military-like decisions. How can you ask jobless people, some of them married with families, and are only holding on some for of jobs elsewhere, to go back to school?”
“Why are they disrupting our lives at such a time when they could just wait and send us to school once they employ us? Some of us are paying school fees for our children, and now we are back to school paying our own fees with no jobs,” she concluded.
On her part Stephanie lamented thus: “I did my teaching practice back while in college – and now I will be heading for ye another teaching practice expected to run for almost three months. I am so broke I have no idea how I am going to survive and I am a single woman. I should be looking for a husband and a stable, not attending classes broke and 33 years of age.”
This comes just days after the Ministry of Education announced new changes that will affect future recruitment of students willing to join the Teacher Training Colleges.
In the fresh changes announced on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, by the Principal Secretary for Early Learning and Basic Education, Julius Jwan, students looking to join TTCs in the future will be recruited by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS).