Gitonga Marete
30 April 2008
Nairobi — Failure to harmonise civil servants' salaries has led to an exodus of teachers from technical and vocational training institutions popularly known as Tivets.
Many of those who have quit have joined private colleges and public institutions of higher learning where the salaries are better and their chances of promotion higher. This has resulted in an acute shortage of lecturers in tertiary institutions. Young lecturers form the majority of those in search of greener pastures.
During a workshop for college principals in Mombasa recently, officials of the Kenya Association of Technical Training Institutions (KATTI) warned that if the situation was not checked, tertiary institutions would soon be grappling with an acute shortage of teachers.
The workshop attracted officials from more than 40 colleges from the ministries of Science and Technology, Labour, Education, Youth Affairs and Public Works.
Mombasa Polytechnic University College chief principal Akumu Owuor said that last year, five teachers left his institution for jobs in the Ministry of Youth Affairs, where they were now earning even better salaries than those of college principals.
"If junior officers in the ministry are paid better than a principal of a college then young people will definitely run away," he said. "It is hard to retain them."
Some senior lecturers and college principals were holding onto their jobs not because they earned decent pay but because they love their jobs. But it is a matter of time before they too are lured into the private sector.
KATTI chairman Charles Imbali, who is the principal of Kenya Technical Teachers College, said that over the years, tertiary institutions had been given a raw deal on the allocation of teachers employed by the Teachers Service Commission being inadequate.
According to him, there was no time when the institutions had been allocated more than 50 teachers.
Every year, they only got an average of 30 new teachers - a number that is far below the demand.
Mr Imbali noted that the shortage had got worse due to post-election violence because some teachers had asked for transfers to favourable areas to avoid insecurity in other parts of the country. Others had taken advantage of the unrest to seek transfers.
The Government planned to train lecturers in these institutions, a move Mr Imbali says was timely. However, he is worried that unless the lecturers are well remunerated after being trained, they too would leave, making the initiative futile.
Departments like architecture, pharmacy, laboratory technology, law and computer science have a shortage of lecturers.
But since there are no teachers trained to teach in these disciplines, the institutions, and by extension universities, rely on part-time teachers.
Extra income
Lecturers teaching these subjects are professionals who devote much of their time to their respective professions and only teach to earn extra income.
To attract young lecturers, the Government is being challenged to make teaching more competitive. According to the principal of the Kenya Polytechnic, Mr Gabriel Muthwale, there is need for polytechnic graduates to take teaching and training courses before they are deployed to teach.
The skills they acquire from such training, including how to deal with course content and time management, make work easy for them.
"But again the issue of remuneration comes into play because teaching is not lucrative," says Mr Muthwale.
"The only way to attract professionals into teaching is to make it as competitive as other professions." Recently, the Government announced that college principals would be put on performance contracts, just like permanent secretaries and heads of departments.
But the principals have taken issue with the move, pointing out that a performance contract binds one to the job, and if one is to devote his or her time to the job, then they should be well compensated.
Already, the principals say they have set up committees to devise strategic plans for their institutions in readiness for the new system which comes into force in July.
But the pay, they say, is discouraging and might put them at loggerheads with the Government.
To understand the predicament the principals are facing, one needs to compare the salary of a principal that averages Sh45,000 with that of a civil servant in the same job group who earns more than Sh100,000.
"The disparity is so wide that it is going to negatively impact on teachers' morale and even jeopardise the noble goal of performance contracts," says Mr Imbali.
The principals also say that the newly released scheme of service only mentions job titles and roles without addressing the issue of remuneration especially among officers holding positions with responsibilities.
Pertinent issues
"The scheme does not address pertinent issues," says Mr Imbali. "It should also be urgently reviewed to cater for cadres within the technical education system."
Concerns have also been raised over students undertaking diploma courses in these institutions. It is not clear whether these students are eligible for loans from the Higher Education Loans Board and under what terms they could enjoy the loans.
"Students who have undergone their diploma courses should also be considered for government funding once they are enrolled for degree courses," Mr Owuor said.
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