At least 100,000 teachers will have been employed by 2026, since President William Ruto was elected.

The president, while speaking in Meru on Saturday, June 21, enumerated the areas of priority his regime was focusing on to bring solutions.

Ruto said he was committed to streamlining the health and agriculture sectors and shaping the economy and job creation, as well as reinvigorating the education sector

Dwelling much on education, the president hinted at the government freeing more resources to cover the gaps inconveniencing the sector, including the lack of educational infrastructure, shortage of learning materials, understaffed of educators and inadequate university funding.

He said the government was preparing to employ at least 24,000 teachers by the end of January 2026, an additional number on the 76,000 initially employed in his regime.

"You gave me the chance to lead Kenya. You told me a lot of issues you wanted me to correct to better the lives of Kenyans. You told me to look into the economy, agriculture, our children's education, health and job creation. Today I have a report. First, you said you wanted education to be streamlined. We had the challenge of the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC); parents didn't know about it and how the programme was going on, we had the problem of teacher understaffing, lack of classrooms and university education funding. As of now, we have employed 76,000 new teachers, and before January 2026, we will have employed 24,000 teachers to have a total of 100,000," he said.

At least 110,000 new teacher hires are targeted in Ruto's first term ending in 2027.

The shortage of teachers has been among the major challenges in the Competency-Based Education (CBE) which transitioned from CBC.

Late last year, reported on the government employing 46,000 Junior Secondary School (JSS) teachers under permanent and pensionable terms.

This move followed earlier protests by the teachers, who had demanded formal absorption by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) after having been taken in as interns.

Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba stated that the recruitment fulfilled commitments previously made to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT).

Separately, as hinted earlier, the Ministry of Education recently announced a shift from the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) to Competency-Based Education (CBE), which the government praised as appropriate to make learning affordable and easily accessible.

Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok assured that the government would fully support the transition of 1.2 million students advancing from junior to senior school, facilitated by the KEMIS system.

Bitok said the employment of the new cohort of teachers would actualise CBE.

Source: TUKO.co.ke