First Edition, March 2025
Commonwealth Teachers Group (CTG)
World Bank. After an interlude of nearly two decades when their policies were booted, the two Bretton
Woods institutions are back with a bang in Kenya. The country was once again adopting the tenets of
corporate education reforms that wreaked immense damage to Kenya in the 1990s.
Under the reforms styled as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the government did away with free
education, introducing the so-called cost-sharing. The employment of teachers was frozen, and the
development of new schools all but halted. The government stopped providing learning resources including
books, uniforms and meals. The government even toyed with retrenching teachers, but met strong
resistance.
A decade later, a new government overruled the SAPs and scaled up public financing for education. Kenya
implemented free primary education and rolled out special funds to support secondary schools, vocational
institutions and universities. More teachers were employed, although shortages continue to fester.
Concrete efforts were made to improve working conditions through collective bargaining, salary reviews
health insurance and professional development, among others.
I briefed the 10th World Congress how the 2024/2025 Finance Bill, then before Parliament, risked taking us
back to the 1990s. Contrary to our expectations, the Bill gutted funds for the employment of 46,000
teachers who were engaged in 2023 on so- called ‘internship’ contacts. The intern teachers were paid less
than half what their permanent colleagues earned. They enjoyed no medical cover and had no right to
union representation.
The employment of ‘intern teachers’ is a text-book case on casualization of the teaching profession. We had
condoned it on the government’s clear pledge that it would convert them to formal employment after a
year. The Finance Bill left no doubt that the government was reneging on its promise. The Bill also clawed
back on a salary increment we had signed just a year earlier. It halved the budget for teachers’ medical
cover and took away funds for the employment of 20,000 new teachers.
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