Supremacy battles between the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) are set to escalate as the latter establishes eight regional centers to assess learners living with disabilities.
The program, which will be implemented with the support of the Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE) and other friendly stakeholders, will see the establishment of Education Assessment and Resource Centres (EARC) in eight regions of the country. This move is expected to catalyze a paradigm shift in the assessment of learners with special needs.
Education News has learned that the Ministry of Education (MoE) is set to take over the assessment of learners with special needs from TSC. Under the new arrangement, EARC officers will be recruited, rendering the TSC Curriculum Support Officers for Special Needs (CSOs) effectively jobless.
Fear and uncertainty have continued to dominate the CSOs deployed to assess learners with disabilities across various sub-counties in the country. The role of these TSC officers has been the assessment, placement, and referral of learners with special needs. They have also been instrumental in sensitizing parents, teachers, and other stakeholders on how best to assist learners in overcoming and managing their disabilities.
As the Ministry of Education strategizes to take over the assessment function from TSC, many CSOs interviewed were generally optimistic that they would be considered to continue their duties from the newly established EARC centers. They further argued that their experience and expertise are unparalleled, as they have undergone training in a wide range of functional assessments in the special needs domain.
If this scenario materializes, the MoE will have to request that TSC release the CSOs to serve in the newly established EARC centers across the Republic. If there were insufficient consultations between the two government agencies, a tug-of-war could ensue that may prove unstoppable.
This proposal is likely to face resistance from TSC, which believes that the responsibility for assessing learners with disabilities was vested in it by the 2010 Constitution. TSC may also feel that MoE is encroaching into teacher management, which falls squarely within TSC’s territory.
On the other hand, MoE may argue that the well-being of learners, in general, is their direct responsibility, and assessing them is part of their mandate. This possible push and pull could result in unnecessary legal actions between the two organizations.
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The establishment and equipping of EARC centers by KISE is understood to be part of the wider recommendations outlined in the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms report on education and reforms of 2023. According to the recommendations, KISE is to be an autonomous center of assessment, managing the EARC centers established across the eight regions of the country.
Currently, there are about 1,000 CSOs working with TSC across the country. They were deployed to oversee the assessment of learners with disabilities, a function that TSC took over.
It is worth noting that EARC centers existed in the 1990s and early 2000s but collapsed due to poor funding. The CSOs, who were then under MoE, ran the EARCs while also inspecting teachers’ work in the classroom. This may be an attempt by the Ministry to recall this function back under its jurisdiction.
By Kaptich Tarus.
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