Selected factors determining secondary school teacher demand in Kenya: Trends, effects and projections

Abstract

Teachers are an important human resource in the teaching and learning processes and their training and utilization therefore requires critical consideration. The education sector in Kenya faces many challenges, including escalating teacher wage bill, teacher shortages in schools alongside surpluses in the labour market, inequitable distribution and inefficient utilization of teachers. There is therefore the need for a framework for projecting and relating demand to the supply in order to avoid imbalances in the future. The purpose of this study was to establish the trends and effects of factors that determine the demand for trained secondary school teachers in Kenya. The study also aimed at developing a model that embraces a framework for projecting future teacher demand. A cross-sectional research design was adopted in this study. The population of this study included all the 4236 public secondary schools in Kenya in 2007, graduate and diploma teachers who have been teaching in the public secondary schools in Kenya between 1990 and 2007 and sixteen Teacher Service Commission (TSC) provincial staffing officers. Simple random sampling was used to select 351 public secondary schools. Data on all graduate and diploma teachers who have been teaching in public secondary schools between 1990 and 2007 were obtained from the TSC records. A purposive sample of eight provincial staffing officers at the TSC Headquarters was also included. The data were collected by use of two document analysis profoma and one interview schedule. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, trend data analysis, Pearson’s product moment coefficient and Dagostino Pearson test, Shapilo-Wilk W test for normal data and Poisson regression. The study established that the main factors determining secondary school teacher demand in Kenya include: number of teachers on duty, secondary school enrolment, class size and number of newly employed teachers each year. The study also concluded that if the current trends in teacher demand factors in public secondary schools are maintained, there will be a shortage of eight teachers, on average, at the school level and a shortage of 79,901 teachers at the national level in 2030. The study developed a framework for projecting secondary school teacher demand as well as generating pertinent information on the factors related to secondary teacher workforce dynamics and its planning. By understanding these factors and their plausible future trends the policy makers, including the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) would take proactive policy reforms that would help reduce the level of teacher shortages in secondary schools in Kenya.