By Roy Hezron
The Office of the Auditor General is expected to conduct an audit of all public schools National Education Management Information Systems (NEMIS) in all the 47 counties in Kenya from today August 30, 2022 in the ongoing school audit exercise by the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu.
This is revealed in the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) Circular released yesterday August 29, 2022 by the Principal Secretary in the State Department of Early Learning and Basic Education Dr. Julius Jwan to all County Directors of Education (CDE).
In what is clearly a crackdown on corrupt practices within public schools, the Auditor General is demanding to look at all books of accounts from the public institutions and County Directors have been instructed to avail them to facilitate the process.
In the Circular, Dr. Jwan has instructed the CDEs to avail themselves in their respective offices and provide the necessary documents to the auditors from Gathungu’s office, in order to enable them to complete the audit exercise within the shortest time possible.
“The Office of the Auditor General will conduct NEMIS/Schools Audit from August 30, 2022 in all the 47 Counties. The exercise will commence with an entry meeting at the County Directors of Education (CDEs) offices in each of the 47 Counties on August 30, 2022 at 9 a.m.,” stated Dr. Jwan in the Circular.
The Auditor General is for the first time carrying out a direct audit exercise to all public schools in the country targeting two (2) Financial Years (FY) 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 with the exercise seen to heavily focus on the public Secondary Schools in the country in particular County, Extra-County and National Schools that receive a huge chunk of capitation from the exchequer.
In a previous circular dated July 6, 2022 the Ministry notified the schools of the intended audit instructing the CDEs and Sub-County Directors of Education (SCDEs) to prepare a list of public schools and their enrolment, acknowledgement of Free Day Secondary Education (FDSE) funds and capitation by schools and the enrolment data for the County and Sub-county for the years under review.
For readiness of the school audit exercise, the Principals on the other hand were instructed to prepare two (2) Financial Years schools’ register, financial statements in the format prescribed by International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) or statement of accountability, cashbooks for all accounts (minimum of 4).
Others are bank statements for all accounts, vouchers to support payments, list of all non-teaching staff, letter of approval for Repair, Maintenance and Improvement (RMI) expenditure and list of teaching staff.
The 2022 Economic Survey report indicates that as at 2021 there were 23,566 public primary schools in the country whose total enrolment increased by 1.1 per cent from 10,170,100 in 2020 to 10,285,100 in 2021.
Further, the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) Taskforce data of 2020, shows that there were a total of 9,077 public secondary schools in the country which comprise of 112 National schools (52 boys’ schools, 55 girls’ schools and 5 mixed schools); 776 Extra County Schools (361 boys’ schools, 349 girls’ schools and 66 mixed schools).
A total of 1,378 County Schools (comprising of 353 boys’ schools, 516 girls’ school and 509 mixed schools) and 6,776 Sub-County Schools (comprising of 167 boys’ schools, 312 girls’ schools and 6,297 mixed schools).
The Ministry launched the new re-engineered NEMIS recently with MoE Cabinet Secretary Prof. George Magoha stating that the new upgraded system will provide more accurate data and is fine-tuned to serve all the stakeholders in the education ministry while allowing parents to monitor their children’s learning.
