Teachers for the second time Friday scored a major victory against their employer on promotions, professional training and transfers after the labour court declined to suspend its earlier decision.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will now be forced to promote close to 50,000 teachers who have attained higher academic qualifications as well as others who merit.
APRAISAL TOOL
The teachers’ employer said that it will contest the decision at the Court of Appeal.
TSC had argued that promotions could only occur once there are vacancies but the argument was dismissed by the court, which ruled that they should be based on merit, vacancies and academic qualifications.
Attempts by TSC to use the ruling to deny more than 160,000 teachers holding administrative positions their third phase of salary increment under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) estimated at Sh13 billion also flopped.
Justice Byram Ongaya directed TSC to convene validation meetings soonest, so that they can finalise the performance measurement tools and roll the scheme out in September. In the judgement, the court had directed the validation for finalising the performance measurement tools be done by December 1, and the rollout to start in January 2020.
The judge said he could not issue a blanket order stopping his decision because the matter was no longer before him and if TSC was not satisfied, it should appeal. The court suspended the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) modules, saying they fell short of professional development programmes.
Friday, Justice Ongaya said the TSC had failed to convince him as to how stopping the implementation of the performance appraisal tool would paralyse its operations.
In an affidavit, TSC’s chief executive officer Nancy Macharia argued that suspending the performance management tools was an affront to public interest as it makes employed teachers not to be accountable in exercising their duty. The commission argued that the decision violates the Constitution and the Public Finance Management Act, which requires prudent use of public funds and affects the right to education.
STORM MEETING
On promotions, TSC argued that if it were to promotes all unionisable teachers eligible to join Knut in accordance with the schemes of service, the gains of the teachers’ CBA would be crippled, owing to the quashing of the career progression guidelines.
But Justice Ongaya dismissed the arguments, saying he could not sit in an appeal against a decision he made. In the judgement two weeks ago, Justice Ongaya directed TSC to undertake transfer of teachers but only non-officials of unions in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Regulations of Teachers (CORT).
Meanwhile, Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) officials from Bomet and Narok counties Friday stormed a consultative meeting organised by TSC at Kaplong Boys High School.
Mr Franklin Choge, the TSC senior director in-charge of finance, chaired the meeting on behalf of Ms Macharia. The meeting had brought together teachers, education officials and school boards of management from the two counties.
“How can they lock out a key stakeholder in such a meeting?” wondered Bomet Knut branch chairman Malel Langat.
At the hall, 14 unionists grabbed empty seats and moved them to the dais where they sat among the TSC officials.