PS raises red flag over mass failure of teacher trainees

What you need to know:

  • More than 5,000 trainees out of 12,000 that sat the examination in 2016 failed or were made to repeat.
  • He said conversion of TTCs to university colleges as a result of political pressure.

The government has raised a red flag about mass failure of teacher trainees in national examinations that were administered by the Kenya National Examination Council (Knec).

This is after it emerged that more than 5,000 trainees out of 12,000 that sat the examination in 2016 failed or were made to repeat.

Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang said the government was dissatisfied with the primary teacher (PTE) examination results in various colleges.

“A glimpse at the results shows that many students have either failed or been referred and the TTCs offering the school-based teacher training programme are the affected most. Some TTCs have as many as 400 referrals and many failures, which is unacceptable,” said Dr Kipsang.

FAILURES

He went on: “Clearly something is wrong and this cannot be allowed to continue. I have been informed that in the previous years, most public TTCs have been performing well, with one or two colleges registering a few referrals and failures.”

Dr Kipsang is now calling on principals of the institutions to conduct a postmortem on the results collectively and identify the problem and possible solution.

“We have to review the school-based programme if it is affecting quality of the regular programme,” said Dr Kipsang during a college principals conference in Mombasa recently.

He noted that training of early childhood education teachers in TTCs will harmonise instructions and asked institutions with facilities to introduce the programme.

“The teacher training curriculum will now and again be reformed so that it is in tandem with changes in the teaching methodologies,” he said.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

He said conversion of TTCs to university colleges as a result of political pressure was a hindrance to the development of the sector.

According to the chairman of Kenya Teachers Colleges Association James Wachaga, the subject that had most referrals and failures was Social Studies.

“On our side teachers were able to cover syllabus and I believe lack of efforts on the side of students could have contributed to the failures,” said Mr Wachaga.

The trainee teachers sat exams in eight subjects.

“Our deans of students looked at the results and in some cases some students did not even attempt some questions. We hope Knec will give us a report so that we can look at what went wrong,” added Mr Wachaga.