By Abdullahi Salad - Reporter
GARISSA, October 1, 2026 – Leaders in Garissa County have asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to employ 1,700 trainee teachers, arguing that hiring local youth is the way to solve the region's teacher shortage.
The request came as a sub-committee of the National Assembly's Education Committee met at Garissa University on September 29 to collect public views on six proposed education bills. At the forum, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) called for stronger school funding provisions to ensure money reaches schools on time.
The new request builds on a programme the government launched earlier. In June, President Ruto announced that 1,800 teachers from Wajir, Mandera and Garissa had been hired under a special programme aimed at addressing the teacher shortage in northern Kenya. Ruto said that three years ago it was agreed that the lasting solution was to train more local teachers.
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To support this effort, the government operationalised teacher training colleges in Wajir, Kotulo and Mandera to complement Garissa Teachers Training College.
The region's teacher shortage began in 2014, when Al-Shabaab killed 28 people aboard a bus in Mandera, prompting non-local teachers to leave the region.
In previous years, Garissa faced a shortage of 913 teachers in primary schools and 651 in secondary schools, with 118 primary schools run by the head teacher alone. Nationally, Kenya's public schools are short of more than 96,000 teachers.