The High Court has quashed the Teachers Service Commission’s (TSC) ongoing recruitment process for a substantive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer, dealing a fresh setback to a search that has already dragged on for well over a year and ordering the Commission to start the entire process over from scratch.
Justice Francis Nyungu Kyambia, sitting in Kiambu, delivered the judgment on September 17, 2026, finding that TSC’s May 2025 recruitment advertisement breached both the Constitution and the Commission’s own Human Resource Policies and Procedures Manual.
The court found that the vacancy notice, published on May 6, 2025, gave prospective applicants only 13 days to submit their applications, with the deadline set for May 19, well short of the minimum 14-day application window the Commission’s own manual requires.
“I find, as a fact, that the advertised application window was 13 days. Neither the 14-day minimum nor the requirement to disclose proposed remuneration was observed,” Justice Kyambia ruled.
The advertisement’s failure to disclose the salary and benefits attached to the post was found to separately breach transparency requirements under Article 47 of the Constitution and TSC’s own internal guidelines.
Justice Kyambia consequently declared the May 6, 2025 advertisement and the whole recruitment process built on it invalid and directed TSC to re-advertise the position afresh in full compliance with the Constitution, the law and its own internal procedures, ordering that the fresh process proceed “without undue delay,” though the court declined to impose a specific deadline for completion.
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The judgment followed a petition filed by Kiambu resident Simon Kariu Kimaita, who had originally gone to court to challenge the underlying statutory qualifications required for the role.
Kimaita argued that the mandatory requirement for candidates to hold a degree in education and at least ten years’ experience in the sector was unnecessary, unreasonable and effectively structured to favour teachers and internal candidates over other qualified professionals.
On that specific question, Justice Kyambia ruled against him, upholding the statutory education and experience requirements as constitutionally valid. The Commission’s undoing instead came down to how it had actually run the process, rather than who it was legally entitled to require as candidates.
Because the court nullified the recruitment from its foundation, TSC cannot simply resume where the process left off. The Commission cannot rely on the shortlist it had already compiled, recall candidates who applied under the now-invalidated advertisement, or pick up the exercise at the point it was previously frozen.
Instead, it must begin an entirely new recruitment cycle from advertisement through to appointment, a significant setback in terms of time, even as the ruling finally provides legal clarity after months of uncertainty.
Tuesday’s judgment is only the latest chapter in a recruitment saga that has stretched on since the position fell vacant following the expiry of long-serving CEO Nancy Macharia’s term on June 30, 2025.
Evaleen Mitei has served as Acting Secretary and CEO in the interim, though her position has itself been complicated by the legal limit restricting an acting office holder to no more than two consecutive six-month terms, a limit that raised the prospect of a leadership vacuum at the Commission earlier this year with no clear legal provision for a further extension.
The recruitment process had already been suspended once by an earlier injunction that froze it from May 2025, before that injunction was lifted and the exercise resumed on January 29, 2026, only for the High Court to issue fresh conservatory orders barely a week later, on February 3, halting the process again pending Kimaita’s application, the very case that has now culminated in Tuesday’s judgment quashing the process outright.
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