The Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) is seeking to hire 6,000 interns to help reduce the teacher-deficit in Kenya.

According to Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia Macharia, the National Treasury is ready to release Sh1.2 billion which will be used in hiring and paying the interns.

Most of the interns will be posted to sub-county secondary schools.

The TSC chief said Kenya has a deficit of 114,581 teachers.

Speaking last month at the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) Headquarters on Dennis Pritt Road, Nairobi during the release of the 2021 KCSE results, Macharia said the TSC has so far hired 28,000 interns to help manage the shortage.

She further said that the National Treasury has released Sh2.5 billion which will be used to hire 5,000 more teachers on permanent and pensionable terms.

“I wish to assure the country that the Commission will immediately embark on the exercise to recruit the teachers to ensure that they report to work as soon as possible, to ease the existing teacher-shortage in schools,” she said.

Macharia announced that the Commission aims at training all the 116,024 high school teachers by end of 2022. Some 56,024 secondary school teachers are yet to be trained on CBC.

“The public should be well-assured that all our teachers in secondary schools will have been tooled by January (2023)to welcome the junior secondary school students,” she said.

.

The TSC chief said 1,594 school heads, who were scheduled to retire in either 2020 or 2021, but extended their contracts to avert a leadership crisis as a result of Covid-19 pandemic, can now proceed on retirement.

The vacancies that they will leave behind will be filled by January 2023, said Macharia.

The school heads include secondary school principals and primary school head teachers.

Macharia also hailed 16,000 teachers who, despite being advised to stay at home due to Covid-19, braved the risks of the disease and reported physically to work.