Schools which hosted teachers for re-tooling exercise across the country are yet to be paid their dues a situation that has made several schools to operate on strain budget as they prepare for Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations.
According to several Principals who spoke to Education News, the schools were advised to mobilize own resources to carter for food and space for the trainees and their facilitators.
Some 56,000 teachers recruited by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) this year were recently retooled to ensure compliance with the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), an exercise that took place from October 6-13, 2023 in several institutions countrywide.
The TSC promised to reimburse all these institutions their funds immediately after the completion of the training programme.
The Principals said they were supposed to be paid at the rate of Ksh. 550 per day per participant for each school, to serve morning tea and snacks, lunch and evening tea.
These Principals are crying foul that their employer did not honour its words and a good number of these institutions are straining to carter for bills arising from the preparation of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations where majority of the schools will start on Monday next week.
They say that they are going through difficult times, some of them being forced to even use their own salaries to keep the KCSE candidates in schools.
The low allocation of capitation for schools from the National Government has even made matters worse making them to run on stained budget.
Education News has learnt that even the teachers who were trained in the same programme are also complaining that the Commission is yet to refund them for the expenses incurred in travelling from their working stations to the training venue.
They told Education News that they were entitled to Ksh. 750 per participant to carter for travelling expenses per day, meaning that the Commission was supposed to refund each teacher who participated in the retooling exercise an equivalent of Ksh. 3, 750.
These teachers are now questioning the sincerity of the Commission in advising them to use own resources and be refunded immediately after the event.
Contacted, Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KESSHA) National Treasurer Amos Cherono clarified that some schools had received the payment especially in Elgeyo Marakwet County stating that some counties may not have been paid as World Bank which funds the project had to validate documents before clearance.
Several TSC Sub-county Directors however confirmed that the cash to schools had not been paid, including their own allowances for serving as Trainer of Trainers (ToTs) and Co-ordinators of the training centres.
By Our reporter
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