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Anyone who has at any one time in his or her lifetime gone through a public school can testify to the frequent times teachers have missed classes.
About 20 per cent of teachers in Kenyan public primary schools do not teach at any given time when they are required to do so.
The Global Monitoring Report — Education for All 2000-2015 report indicates that more than 40,000 of the 200,000 primary school teachers abscond classes.
The report reveals that some teachers do not understand the curricula due to lack of support from the government and other training institutions.
The document, which was released yesterday, shows that teacher absenteeism was affecting the quality of education as it was reducing the number of hours children were being taught.
The report is based on an independent survey commissioned by Unesco on behalf of the international community. It involved agencies and governments.
The report states that contract teachers tend to be very effective where parental or community involvement is greater.It says the positive effects of hiring contract teachers were observed only in communities where parents were trained to monitor staff absenteeism.
They were also noted when relatives of local civil service teachers were not hired as contract teachers.