School Heads Give Conditions for Signing Appraisals

Mathias Ringa

22 June 2011

Nairobi — Secondary school headteachers will sign performance contracts if the government puts them on a special scheme of service.

The 5,000-plus members did not mind being appraised if the government accorded them a scheme of service, their national association has said.

It was important for school heads to be accorded the scheme since they are the institution’s managers, the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association said.

“We are ready to be vetted for our performance to demonstrate our competence once the government implements our scheme of service,” national chairman Cleophas Tirop said.

He was speaking in Mombasa during the association’s 36th annual delegates meeting attended by more than 5,000 secondary school heads.

Mr Tirop called on Education Minister Prof Sam Ongeri to push for the implementation of headteachers’ scheme of service. The headteachers voted to support the remarks by a show of hands.

Prof Ongeri said he was impressed that at long last the headteachers had decided to sign performance contracts.

He said he would negotiate with them on the scheme of service after they sign the performance contracts.

However, he expressed reservations over the matter, because the Kenya National Union of Teachers is fiercely opposed to the idea of performance contracts.

“The major stumbling block we face as a ministry is the Knut officials who have over the years been rejecting the signing of performance contracts by teachers,” he added.

The minister said he will soon hold consultations with association officials over the two issues so that a solution could be found.

In 2008, then Knut secretary-general Francis Ng’ang’a told teachers to reject the performance contracts arguing that they would be subjected temporary employment.

Meanwhile, the secondary schoolheads called on the government to slap a ban on adults learning in primary and secondary schools.

Mr Tirop said it was wrong for the Ministry of Education to allow adults to learn with children in the same classrooms as the adults could ruin the young students’ morals.

“We must protect our children from the adult students. By mixing adults and children in classes, we are endangering their character and morals,” he said.

The government, he said, should launch a special programme for adult students. Prof Ongeri concurred that adult students need to be separated from young learners.

AllAfrica – All the Time