Lack of teachers is likely to hurt the performance of Rangala Girls, one of Siaya county's leading schools, principal Susan Owino has said.
"The school has only two TSC physics teachers. There is a shortage of five chemistry and three biology teachers. This will hamper our performance in sciences," Owino said.
She said that only a few teachers are posted to the school annually.
Rangala Girls High School was number three in Siaya in the 2018 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination. Its performance in science subjects was outstanding nationwide.
Board of management chairperson Lilian Odero said the school has a severe shortage of teachers. She said the school has a student population of 2,150 and it requires 80 teachers, not the now overworked 38.
"To have a deficit of 42 teachers is unfortunate to a leading school like Rangala," Odero said.
She said the board has persistently asked the Teachers Service Commission for more teachers, but their calls have not been taken into consideration.
"Yes, the TSC has posted some teachers to the school but that has not been able to fill the gap owing to the population of students," Odera said.
She said the board will not get tired of asking for more teachers even if it means writing a petition to the TSC. "We are going to ensure that we exhaust all possible means of requesting for more teachers to maintain our performance."
Odero said they have drafted a petition to the commission to reinforce the request to have enough teachers. "All parents have signed the petition."
"We are also going to meet the commission's chief executive officer Nancy Macharia to reinforce our request," the chair said.
Odero, however, told parents that despite the shortage they cannot leave students on their own and asked them to employ BOM teachers to save the situation.
"The board has employed 25 teachers but that is really eating into our resources of managing the school," Odero said.
She said the government's 100 per cent transition policy has caused congestion in the school.
"We are requesting for support to put up an ultra-modern tuition block to ease congestion in the school," Odero said.
The school is supposed to have 12 streams but due to lack of space, it has nine.
