A setback for 20,000 intern teachers looms as the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has announced that it does not have the funds required to transition them into permanent roles, citing a budget deficit of Sh3.5 billion.

During a session with the National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Education, TSC Director of Finance Cheptumo Ayabei confirmed that the commission is unable to promote the intern teachers to permanent positions because of this financial shortfall.

“As we speak, that funding has not been provided, so these teachers will continue to serve for the next two years or otherwise advised. There’s provision to recruit these teachers, but we are going to recruit 20,000 teachers this year,” Ayabei said.

Ayabei emphasised that while the intention to regularise their employment still stands, the lack of funding means the teachers will remain in temporary roles for up to two additional years, depending on future financial allocations.

Additionally, a court ruling mandates that intern teachers be confirmed within one year of their appointment. However, given the current budgetary limitations, Ayabei said the commission’s best-case scenario for fulfilling this requirement is by December 2025, within the 2025/2026 financial year.

Baringo North MP Benjamin Makilap expressed concerns over the backlog of intern teachers yet to be absorbed into permanent roles, despite new recruitment plans for additional interns.

“When you were recruiting the teachers, was it one year or two years? Because you can’t bring before us a budget that you want to recruit new intern teachers, yet there’s a backlog,” Makilap said.

“I know there’s a court ruling, and the best we have now is a maximum of one year. We need to confirm the existing intern teachers by December, which is within the financial year 2025/2026.”

The legislators also raised concerns about the exclusion of trained teachers aged above 45, many of whom remain unemployed despite their qualifications.

Teso South MP Mary Emase called on the Commission to implement affirmative action for teachers over the age of 45, who are approaching retirement without having served in the public sector.

“I don’t know if there’s an affirmative action to recruit teachers who are over 45 years of age and haven’t been absorbed even as interns because these are teachers who have been trained and are already approaching retirement age and have not been employed,” Emase said.

The concern was echoed by Education Committee Chair Julius Melly, who criticised the apparent age bias in TSC’s recruitment policies, which he said place a significant socio-economic burden on older, unemployed teachers.

“We have a lot of an ageing teachers’ population who haven’t been recruited into the system, and many of them have family responsibilities. You can’t say that you will not recruit a teacher aged 45 years just because of his age. Any teacher can be recruited up to two years before retirement,” Melly said.

Luanda MP Dick Maungu suggested that the TSC should adopt a targeted recruitment strategy based on age to address the exclusion of older teachers.

“Why don’t you do a target recruitment based on age? If an individual is above 45 years, it will be easier, you will morph them up. These aged teachers are actually Kenyans, and they are perishing. We can actually set the minimum age of recruitment so that we conclusively deal with this matter,” Maungu said.

Makilap further urged the TSC to provide comprehensive data on all registered teachers to help quantify the scale of the problem and determine the resources needed for recruitment.

“The TSC should give us data of registered teachers with registration certificates by TSC so that we can quantify the numbers and know the amount of resources that will be required to recruit these teachers,” he said.

Ayabei reiterated that the conversion of intern teachers to permanent positions hinges entirely on the availability of funding.

“The conversion of teachers is all based on funding. If we get the funding, we will convert them into permanent and pensionable. We did engage National Treasury, and because of fiscal space and constraints, we were not given provision for conversion,” Ayabei said.

In the upcoming financial year, the TSC is also facing an additional funding shortfall of Sh5.71 billion, which could affect the implementation of a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the provision of teachers’ medical insurance.

TSC Director for Legal, Labour and Industrial Action, Cavin Anyuor, revealed that the National Treasury has not committed to financing the new CBA that is set to begin in July 2025.

“The area which has not been funded is the CBA, although we are still negotiating the CBA. But we have written to the National Treasury to consider because the CBA that we have is ending on 30th June 2025, and a new one should commence on 1st July,” Anyuor said.