COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION AND EQUITY IN GRADE PROMOTION OF PUBLIC POST-PRIMARY TEACHERS IN KAKAMEGA COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

The 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement for teachers in Kenya was meant to streamline grade promotion through an inevitable paradigm shift in its implementation policy from the “Scheme of Service” approach to a “Career Based Strategy” approach for both unions, KUPPET and KNUT. However, the combined use of the two approaches due to a court ruling complicated the ability to establish equity levels in promotions since each union was affiliated to its own approach. Given that both unions had members in post-primary institutions, the purpose of this comparative study was to determine the difference in equity in grade promotion of teachers between KUPPET and KNUT at that level. Hypothesis testing was used to test the three study objectives which were to determine the difference in equity in grade promotion of teachers between the application of scheme of service and career progression guideline approaches based on years of service; academic qualification; and teacher performance in TPAD between 2017-2021. The study was conducted in Kakamega County because despite it being among those with the highest mean stagnation index at 15.7 years per grade, it had the highest number of unionized teachers in each of the two unions countrywide. The study was guided by the Socialist economics of education theory pronounced by Louis Blank and a conceptual framework modified from Walton and McKersie’s behavioral theory for labour negotiations. A comparative research design was used with a sample of 1,569 respondents drawn from a study population of 5,923. In sampling research respondents, Systematic random sampling was used to select teachers in each union based on the chronological order of their TSC numbers while purposive sampling was used to select principals to ensure fair representation from all the four categories of schools and saturated sampling was used to select sub-county TSC directors and union executive secretaries. Content validity was enhanced in the study while internal consistency reliability of the instruments was done with a Cronbach alpha co-efficient of 0.877. In data analysis, pairwise correlation helped to determine plausible interactions between grade promotion and the explanatory variables before Logistic regression analysis could be done to model the effect of each of the explanatory variables on grade promotion while controlling for teacher-level and school-level variables. This helped to establish the odds of promotion per approach for purposes of comparison between the two unions. Gini coefficients were then used to measure aggregate values of equity in grade promotion for the two unions. The findings of the study revealed that despite KUPPET reducing the odds of promotion by up to 23.46% based on years of service, there was no statistically significant difference in equity in grade promotion of the teachers between the two unions. Secondly, the study established a statistically significant difference in equity between the two unions based on academic qualifications, with Career Progression Guideline approach reducing the odds of promotion in KUPPET by up to 22.58%. Finally, the study ascertained a statistically significant difference in equity between the two unions based on teacher performance in TPAD ratings with an extra score in 2017, and teaching in extra-county and national schools reducing the odds of promotion to the next grade. In conclusion, grade promotion was found to be marginally equitably distributed in KUPPET than KNUT based on all the explanatory variables of the study. Consequently, the study recommends for harmonization of the two approaches into one hybrid and demarcation of teachers’ membership in to one union per level of education. These findings will be significant to teachers, their employer TSC and their labor unions.