In Kenya, come January 2026, Grade 10 students will transition in to senior school under the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), where they will specialise in one of the 3 pathways: Science, technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM); Arts and Sports Science or Social Sciences.
The Basic education Curriculum Framework BECF) outlines a stagebased pathway for learners with special educational needs. Beginning with foundational interventions, learners progress through intermediate and pre-vocarional stages before specialising at the vocational level. This progression equips them with practical, digital, and life skills to support independence and work readiness. But this pathway itself has a shortage of tutors in a number of vovational areas, ranging from traditional crafts such as weaving, leatherwork, tailoring, embroidery, and food packaging, to agricultural skills like crop and animal farming.
Technical fields, including carpentry, welding, plumbing, masonry, and metalwork, are also understaffed, as are creative and performing arts such as music, event decoration, and visual arts. Service orientated areas, like hairdressing, barbering, beauty therapie housekeeping, laundry, are equally underserved. Even modern fields like photography, print technology, electronics repair and floriculture, lack sufficient educators.
These shortages threaten the CBC’s goal of preparing learners “for work and life”.
This is the scale of demand. What about the supply?
For teacher training colleges (TTC) out of 20.786 applicants, only 11.636 were placed. Of these, 10.800 joined the Diploma in Primary Teacher Education (DPTE) and just 836 were placed in the Diploma in Secondary Teacher Education (DSTE). Evidently, the mismatch between demand and supply is stark. While Kenya’s classrooms urgently need thousands of STEM and vocational educaors, the pipeline remains dominated by traditional arts and scienes, with technical and creative subjects dangerously under represented.
“Teachers were not mere deliverers of policy but co creators of transformation. We commit fiercly, unapologetically, to every child’s right to learn. The UN Recommendations on the Teaching Profession are our compass. They aere clear. teachers must shape curricula, pedagogy and policy. teachers must shape the future.”
Vrij naar Dr. Benson Njoroge van Mount Kenya University
