Protests over alleged favoritism have rocked the Teachers Service Commission’s (TSC) recruitment of 9,000 teachers in Kenya.
Unemployed teachers and those working in private schools seeking employment by TSC have protested what they claimed was a skewed scoring method that disadvantages them while favoring interns serving under the commission.
TSC has increased the marks awarded to the teacher interns from 10 to 30 percent, sparking the protests.
The commission has also reduced the marks awarded for length of stay after graduating, which used to give priority to older unemployed graduates.
For teachers who graduated in 2012, the maximum score used to be 50 percent but this has now been reduced to 25 percent.
The most affected are teachers working in private schools who despite possessing considerable experience, may lose out to newer graduates who are under the internship programme.
The recruitment is expected to be intense as there are more than 350,000 registered teachers who are jobless.
