Parents from Kilifi school decry poor results due to teacher shortage

A section of Mitangani Secondary School parents in Ganze Sub-County, Kilifi County have asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to deploy more teachers in the school to solve the understaffing challenges and improve performance.

The parents have also threatened to stage peaceful demonstrations and paralyse learning in the school if their grievances are not addressed.

Led by former Bamba Member of County Assembly Daniel Mangi, they said the school has been underperforming since its inception in 2008 due to a lack of enough teachers.

Mangi said they have written several letters to TSC without any concrete solution and have now turned the pressure on parents to dig deep into their pockets and pay for unemployed teachers.

“TSC has an obligation to ensure all the learning institutions are equipped with a reasonable number of teachers so that the performance is boosted. Mitangani secondary school for the case is trying to work with limited staff and this has hugely affected the performance of national exams compared to the neighbouring schools,” he said.

He said the school which enrolls learners from different parts of the country has a total of nine TSC teachers and 36 more employed by the Board of Management (BOM) against a population of more than 1,500 students.

The former MCA, said students in the school are struggling to catch up with the rest of the country since the majority of the parents are not able to raise money for the BOM teachers.

“Our children are unable to complete their syllabus on time compared to other schools simply because we do not have enough teachers. TSC under the Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia ought to solve this crisis. We know the education sector has been facing challenges for a while but they have enough resources to employ more teachers to our school,” he added.

Students' transfer

A parent, Edward Katana expressed fear that if TSC does not resolve the matter, parents will be forced to transfer their children to neighbouring schools.

A class session at the Mitangani Secondary School in Ganze Sub-County, Kilifi County. (Photo: Eastside Catholic and Mitangani High School)

He adds that their concern is that the institution will collapse when students are withdrawn.

“If TSC will not solve this matter, then parents will have no other alternative than taking their children to other schools because some are even forced to fetch firewood or take their domestic animals to the school to cater for the BOM teachers,” said Katana.

He said the trend can only be reversed by employing more teachers.

Johnson Kahindi, another parent, said Ganze Sub-County has very few schools that are sparsely placed, with Mitangani Secondary School being one of the few that has improved in infrastructure but few teachers.

He raised concern that the performance of those sitting national exams will remain poor not because the students are not bright but due to a lack of sufficiently trained teachers.

“I am not surprised that most of our children in this school perform dismally. It is a song we have been singing and pushing the TSC for some years now that without enough trained teachers we will always post poor results,” he said.

In the 2020/2023 Strategic Plan, the Teachers Service Commission established the shortage was attributed to rapid growth in school enrollment, establishment of new schools and expansion of existing institutions.

However, the shortage of teachers has harmed learners, teachers' effectiveness and the public education system as a whole.

Mangi urged the national government to allocate sufficient funds for teacher recruitment so as to address the perennial teacher shortage in Ganze Constituency.