Nairobi — Teachers will be paid according to their performance and not the current uniform package if a World Bank proposal is effected.

This will also mean that the 1997 salary increment which is in its second phase of implementation will have to be reviewed.

The salary increment saw teachers across the board get between 150 and 200 per cent increase. Phase one of the four-phase payment programme was paid before the 2002 elections.

Teachers' salaries are not based on their performance but are given to all the 235,000-strong teaching staff depending on the job group. This is the same for all civil servants except for middle and upper cadre civil servants whose salaries have from July this year been pegged on their performance.

The World Bank is a key donor that has increased its support to the education sector since the inception of the free primary education last year.

The bank is concerned that the 1997 salary increment was not sustainable and placed an extra burden on the government especially at a time when about 90 per cent of the education budget for primary and secondary schools is being spent on salaries and other benefits.

The bank's suggestion that the award was untenable and should be re-assessed has previously been rejected by the Kenya National Union of Teachers.

According to the bank's report which was reviewing the country's education and training programme, secondary schools were found to be overstaffed and recommended that re-deployment be done based on need.

"Deployment of teachers according to need is crucial to improve efficiency and education quality. Furthermore, there are large pupil-teacher ratio differences among zones within districts and among districts within provinces," it says.

It adds: "Therefore redeployment of teachers is not infeasible given that within-district and within-province redeployment are relatively low-cost and put less stress on redeployed teachers."

In effect the report is asking the government to effect teacher transfers which should, however, be within the districts and provinces where the teachers work. The aim is to balance staff distribution.

And in an attempt to address this problem, Education Permanent Secretary Karega Mutahi hinted that the suggestion will soon be implemented.

He announced the government will soon divide the country into zones for fair and better distribution of qualified teachers to all teaching institutions to curb the existing imbalances.

Addressing parents, teachers and students yesterday at Kisima girls high school in Samburu District, Prof Mutahi said priority on teachers distribution will be given to arid and semi-arid areas.

The teacher re-distribution is in anticipation of an overwhelming demand for secondary school places following increased enrolment in primary schools caused by free primary education introduced last year.

The bank warns that while the increase of secondary school students was inevitable, the numbers may not be as dramatic as anticipated as many children may be forced to drop out because of fees.

"There is need to put in place clear and transparent mechanisms for exempting the poorest students from paying fees in secondary schools and make available to them bursaries and scholarships that help their families to pay the other costs of schooling," the bank recommends.

It calls for better coordination of agencies including Kenya Institute of Education, Teachers Service Commission and Kenya National Examinations Council for overall sector policy and standards.

Improved management at the grassroots level, says the report, is crucial following the Government's move to decentralise functions of hiring of teachers, curriculum implementation and school level financial management.

By 2012, says the report, the last group of the free primary schooling will reach standard eight and enrolment rates would be expected to stand at between 7.5 million and 8 million during most of the subsequent years.

Classroom utilisation can be intensified through double shifts in areas where there are more than 40 pupils in one classroom on average.

For better utilisation of limited resources, the study says, provision of textbooks and other learning materials may have to be targeted to poor students at the secondary level.

It adds: "At the secondary level, to raise the effectiveness of public spending on education, the government will have to to continue increasing the total resources on instructional materials or reallocate the resources from teacher salaries to other inputs."

Until 2002, the report says, teacher salaries accounted for more than 95 per cent of the recurrent expenditure at the primary and secondary levels. This meant there were almost no public resources remaining for other school inputs, such as learning materials and textbooks.

Additional reporting by Peter Lemeteki