President Uhuru Kenyatta has nominated five members to the Teachers Service Commission to fill commissioner slots.

The names of the nominees were submitted by the President to Parliament for approval hearing on Thursday.

The five nominees are Dr Nicodemus Anyang, Christine Kahindi, Sharon Kisire, Anneta Wafukho and Salesa Abudo, who were among the 35 people that submitted their applications for the posts.

Dr Anyang is Deputy Director of Education at the Ministry of Education.

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Sharon Kisire is a human resources professional with experience in organizational management. She holds several awards on excellence in human capital management and also have a wealth of experience in governance matters from several board roles she holds. She is the first woman to be appointed CPS chief examiner for KASNEB in June 2011 and is recipient of Head of State Commendation (HSC), 2009.

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi referred the names to the Departmental Committee on Education chaired by Busia MP Florence Mutua.

The committee has 21 days to consider the suitability of the nominees and report back to Parliament.

“Conscious of the central role of the commission in the education sector and noting the unprecedented nature of the early learning and basic education calendar for the years 202, 2021 and 2022, the President has requested the National Assembly consider the nominees on a priority basis,” Muturi said.

“Noting that the House will proceed on its normal long recess from 20th August, 2021 in accordance with its published calendar, the committee should expeditiously notify the nominees and the general public of the time and place for holding the approval hearings and thereafter, submit the same to enable the House to consider the matter within the statutory timelines.”

Vice chancellors and university council chairs from various universities in Kenya are meeting MPs today, 24^th November to push for an increase in university fees, to ease funding headache they are currently facing.

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The top university managers have been invited to a virtual meeting by The National Assembly Education Committee to explore the sustainability of the institutions, which are seemingly broke.

During the meeting, the managers will be required to propose interventions to enhance funding’ for public universities to sustain their operations.

According to the VCs press statements, part of the interventions is to increasing fees. “We presented these proposals during a meeting with MPs two weeks ago and this week again we shall have another chance to expound on them,” said Prof Muluvi, chairman of the vice chancellors committee. According to the proposals, fees should 200%, which is three times what is currently paid.

They argue that the cost of training a student has gone up and must be shared appropriately between the university, parents and the government – in a formula that they argue must fund an individual student per academic year.

The money, the VCs say, will cater for tuition fees and salaries of lecturers with funding for development projects done on needs basis and justification pitched by the respective universities.

Currently, government-sponsored students are funded at a flat rate of Sh120,000 per year based on a formula developed in 1989. Of this, Sh86,000 is tuition fees while Sh34,000 caters for students’ personal expenses, including accommodation, food and books.

The government pays Sh70,000 of the tuition money while students pay Sh16,000.

In the Status of University Education in Kenya report, which contains the VCs proposals on funding, they argued that efforts to implement the Differentiated Unit Cost (DUC) have not been effective.

The DUC is the amount of money required by an institution to teach one academic programme per year per student.

The VCs explained that if the DUC is effectively implemented, training dentists would require the highest allocations at Sh600,000 per student for one academic year.

Medicine would require second-highest funding of Sh576,000 per year while pharmacy Sh432,000. Arts (general) would require the least funding of Sh144,000 per year.

“Even with this formula, big universities will continue to top get more money compared to the smaller and new institutions. And also DUC may also not be the silver bullet to funding,” said a VC.

Efforts by Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha to push for universities merger to address the funding gap flopped after VCs and unions’ rejected the move.

Instead, VCs proposed a merger plan pegged on a new students funding strategy.

They proposed government funding per student, where each learner receives capitation funds every month to cater for their education.

The VCs said the blanket allocations to the universities without clear instruction on which student is being funded and for which programmes have caused disparities and accountability gaps.

Also to be discussed is whether the government should continue funding students in private universities in light of the cash crunch in public institutions. Kenya Association of Private Universities (Kapu) has argued that an empowered and supported Universities Fund would resolve the impasse.

“With adequate funding, the Universities Fund will develop criteria of funding all courses under DUC cost that gives weight to each course,” said Kapu chairman Kisau Mumo.