Nearly a half of primary schools teachers in Kenya do not attend classes and this costs the country $0.27 billion a year, a report by the Education Commission has revealed.
The report also says that about 16 percent of teachers do not report to school at all.
This means that out of about 200,000 teachers in primary schools, more than 30,000 teachers do not go to school while about 90,000 who go to school do not go to class to teach.
The report was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Kin-moon at the start of the ongoing 71st General Assembly in New York.
Education budgets
The Commission is made up of presidents, former prime ministers and business and education leaders.
The report observed that teachers take up the largest single expenditure in education budgets, accounting for up to 90 per cent of recurrent costs in some countries.
In Kenya, the teacher’s employer – the Teachers Service Commission – was, in the current financial year, allocated $1.94 billion, with most of it going to teachers’ salaries.
“Increasing the number of hours of actual instructional time is one of the most effective ways to improve learning.”
Click here to read more about the #LearningGeneration Report in the Africa Review.
Teacher absentee is a common phenomenon in Africa, we really need to take decisive measures to deal with it in a more responsible way. It hasn’t been a good thing to look down on it.