- The Basic Education Bill, 2026, has restored the County Commissioner as Chairperson of the County Education Board, reversing their earlier exclusion under the 2013 Act.
- County Education Boards require additional staffing and funding to fulfil their extensive reporting and oversight mandates.
- An independent national body should coordinate the 47 County Education Boards and consolidate their reports for the CS.
The Basic Education Bill, 2026, has restored the County Commissioner, formerly the District Commissioner, to the position of Chairperson of the County Education Board (CEB), the successor to the District Education Board (DEB) under the defunct Education Act, Cap 211.
This is welcome. The Basic Education Act, 2013, which is set to be repealed, had virtually excluded National Government Administrative Officers (NGAO) from the management of education affairs in the counties. This was odd. The functions the law had vested in the County Education Boards required the coordination of the County Commissioner to be realised, since the Board needed to work with other government departments to implement policies, regulations and rules governing basic education. The County Commissioner is the focal point of the national government in the field, and his exclusion from the CEB was regrettable. County Directors of Education and their officers at the sub-county levels already regularly consult County Commissioners on matters touching the safety and health of learners.
The reinstatement of the County Commissioner at the centre of County Education Boards will help address some of the persistent problems that have plagued children’s access to equitable quality education across the country. Section 30(2) of the Basic Education Bill states that the County Education Board shall be an agent of the national government. From one perspective, the County Education Board is the mind, eyes, ears and hands of the national government, so it is only natural that the County Commissioner, the coordinator of national government operations at the county, steers it.
The Onerous Mandate of County Education Boards
Under the proposed law, as with the Basic Education Act, 2013, County Education Boards carry heavy responsibilities. Every County Education Board will be expected to submit annual reports to the Cabinet Secretary, addressing the state of education in each county, including the excellence of education, factors that facilitated or impeded that excellence, access in terms of gender, and other variables.
These reports will be a minefield of information and insight with the potential to guide the Cabinet Secretary in decision-making. Barring reports on emergencies, the annual reports will be bulky, predictably addressing two facets of education reform: structural and curriculum aspects. The structural aspects might address school financing from the National Treasury and from households, and the purposes for which it is used, as well as the adequacy of necessary infrastructure such as classrooms, desks, ablution blocks, laboratories, libraries and office space for teachers. The reports won’t be complete without information about the shortage or availability of teachers and their motivation, the management structures responsible for county education officials, and the adequacy of inspection and supervision of schools in the context of access, equity and inclusivity.
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The Boards will also, unavoidably, address curriculum aspects of education management. Arising from the functions the law has given them, the Board must report on the state of beginning reading instruction at the lowest levels of primary education, whether learners are attaining optimal reading proficiency at every grade, how well numeracy skills are being developed at the earliest levels of learning, and, above all, the acquisition by learners of the basic knowledge the curriculum prescribes as the building block for the skills, attitudes, values and reasoning that define an education.
Suffice it to say that the functions and responsibilities the Basic Education Bill envisions for County Education Boards are extraordinary. They strike at the heart of not just education excellence, but education excellence for all children, regardless of whether they are in public or private schools, rural or urban schools, or from low- or high-potential areas of the country.
Two Implications for Implementation
There are two implications arising from this. The first is that the national government must empower the County Education Boards with money and personnel at the secretariat level to enable them to meet their mandates. County Education Offices and their sub-county counterparts currently suffer from severe staff shortages. District Education Offices in the early 1990s were sufficiently staffed; not so today, owing to the freeze on new recruitment by the Public Service Commission.
The Bill, like the Basic Education Act, 2013, set to be repealed, designates the County Director of Education as Secretary to the County Education Board. The work the basic education law has carved out for the Board is onerous, yet the County Director of Education works with a skeleton staff, which has hampered the delivery of education services to schools and the public. The specialised committees the Bill envisages, covering planning, finance, audit and human resources, registration and management, curriculum, quality assurance and assessment, and discipline and dispute resolution, will require knowledge, tact, thinking and writing capacity that current staffing levels may not sufficiently support.
The committees and the Board will need to look at their mandate in a flexible rather than restricted manner. The law allows the Board to secure experts to help study the structural and operational contours of the policy issues before them. Implied in this mandate is the power to raise questions regarding the structural and curricular aspects of education, with a view to addressing, as best as possible, the legitimate expectations of learners, parents, guardians, educators and policymakers. The 47 County Education Boards will therefore not simply submit briefs to the Cabinet Secretary; the spirit of the basic education law, regulations and international conventions on education and the child will constrain the Boards to act as impartial brokers for education decision-making, making policy proposals to address identified barriers to children’s access to inclusive quality education, or to take advantage of available opportunities to nurture the potential of all school-going children.
The Case for an Independent National Office
The second implication of the onerous functions of the County Education Boards is that the 47 Boards require an independent entity at the national level to work with. This independent entity would function as a liaison office, coordinating the activities of the Boards and, crucially, receiving and consolidating the reports the Boards prepare before submission to the Cabinet Secretary.
The suitability of such an office is grounded in two education laws that have shaped Kenya’s education system. The Basic Education Act, 2013, set to be repealed, provides for the National Education Board. Section 5(2) designates the functions of the National Education Board as being to advise the Cabinet Secretary, the Department of Education, and related departments on policy matters in respect of various aspects of education. Former Cabinet Secretary for Education, Prof. Jacob Kaimenyi, appointed members of the Board, but a new board was never appointed once the tenure of the first board lapsed. The government should not have allowed the Board to lapse. As long as it retains the County Education Boards with their current functions, it must necessarily retain the National Education Board, or an entity outside the management structures of its line Ministry, dedicated to the operations of County Education Boards.
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The defunct Education Act, Cap 211, the law that shaped Kenya’s education system from 1968 until its repeal in 2013, similarly provided for an independent entity. Section 4(1) of the Education Act, Cap 211, read: “The Minister may, by order, establish an advisory council to advise him on any matter concerning education in Kenya or in some part of Kenya and may establish different councils for different areas for different aspects of education.”
Former Quality Assurance and Standards Officer (now retired) Mr Majani Baridi told me that past Ministers of Education never established such an office, meaning the succession of Ministers relied solely on Permanent Secretaries and technocrats to manage education. I think they managed because the environment for delivering education was fairly simple at the time; the population of learners and the dynamism of basic education institutions were not as complex as they are today.
The educational landscape is now considerably more complex. Current management structures already have enough on their plates and may not give their best time, thought and wisdom to consolidating reports from 47 County Education Boards. An independent office with sufficient capacity, free from the distractions of day-to-day operations and problems, would give quality briefs to the Cabinet Secretary for action. What the Cabinet Secretary for Education needs is not just a report, but a report accompanied by pieces of advice for deliberation by the Principal Secretary and technocrats under him, potentially for preparation of a Cabinet Memo for consideration by the Cabinet.
By Kennedy Buhere
Communication Specialist
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