Teachers’ registration a concern

By JINA AMBA
IF a newly-graduated teacher is unregistered, it means he or she was not been selected through the normal school leaver process to go to a teachers’ college, an official says.
Teaching Service Commission (TSC) chairman Samson Wangihomie said this after concerns were raised over the delay in the registration of new graduates.
“Those unregistered teachers may not have been selected through the normal school leaver process to go to teachers’ colleges,” he said.
“They may have gone through teacher training through the governing council or the college principals or, in some instances, we have corporate sponsors, such as members of parliament, who sponsor students from their electorates, when that was done, we noted a lot of discrepancies.”
Wangihomie said some of these graduates might have had low grade point averages (GPAs) while others went through straight from grade 10.
“What the (Education) secretary did was, he then called for all teaching colleges to justify why he should issue them (new graduates) their diplomas and why he should issue them their teacher registrations,” he said.
“The college principals affected had to justify and qualify for that.
“Many parents were affected but then the colleges came in and when they justified and qualified, the secretary then issued them provisional registration certificates and also signed their diplomas and, from there, it went to payroll and many of them are on pay now.”
Wangihomie said the TSC was now being more thorough in verifying the quality of teachers.
“We are not saying no,” he said.
“It’s just that some of them may have gone into through the backdoor to be trained as teachers so there are process and procedures.
“We are doing this all in the name of quality education.
“We want teachers to be qualified to teach and not people who go through the backdoor and not meeting our requirements for selection.”
Wangihomie said the delay in teachers’ pay was with the payroll office which was managed by the Education Department.
He said school leavers who were selected through the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology to go to teachers colleges and had graduated were automatically on the payroll now.
It is understood that the delay in registration and delay in pay affects, especially the non-school leavers.