- KNUT has opposed a Basic Education Bill clause that would move the School Equipment Production Unit from the Ministry of Education to Treasury control.
- The union has proposed retaining SEPU as a semi-autonomous agency under MoE, citing its education-specific expertise and technical links with MoE, TSC and KICD.
- KNUT has also pushed for entrenching comprehensive schools in law, mandating continuous teacher training, and securing formal union representation on KICD’s governing council.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers wants Parliament to keep a school supplies unit under education, not Treasury, control.
Buried in the Basic Education Bill, 2026 is a clause that would wind up the School Equipment Production Unit (SEPU) and fold it into a new class of Treasury-run state enterprises. KNUT has told the National Assembly’s Departmental Committee on Education and Research that this move makes no sense.
SEPU supplies furniture, science equipment, laboratory chemicals and mobile laboratories to schools nationwide. The union does not object to the Government Owned Enterprises Act, 2025, which created the new enterprise category. Its objection is narrower and sharper: SEPU should never have been listed under that Act in the first place.
KNUT’s reasoning centres on expertise. The National Treasury, the union argues, has no grounding in teaching, learning or curriculum development. Placing school supply chains in Treasury’s hands would strip the Director of School Inspection of the tools needed to enforce standards, since that office’s mandate depends on timely, education-specific procurement.
There is a technical case too. SEPU staff currently work alongside the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the Kenya Institute of Special Education (KISE), the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) to train teachers on equipment use and emerging laboratory technology. Cutting that link, KNUT says, would sever support that has no equivalent inside Treasury.
The union also flags a practical problem buried in the bill’s transition clauses. Sections 108 and 109 propose winding up SEPU and redistributing its staff and assets across individual primary, junior and senior schools, as well as the Kenya Institute of Special Education and the National Council for Nomadic Education. With more than 23,000 primary schools and over 9,000 secondary schools nationally, KNUT calls this redistribution practically impossible to execute.
Its preferred fix is to retain SEPU as a semi-autonomous government agency (SAGA) under MoE, not as an enterprise under Treasury.
TSC closes September payroll as teachers await PAYE relief for low-income earners
KNUT Pushes for Comprehensive School Structure
Elsewhere in the memorandum, KNUT throws its weight behind a structural change the bill would formalise: comprehensive schools spanning Pre-Primary 1 through Grade 9, run under a single head of institution supported by two deputies.
The union says this arrangement mirrors recommendations from the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms. A unified Board of Management, it argues, would make better use of shared resources such as classrooms, libraries and playgrounds, while giving schools continuity in leadership and succession planning. Because most primary school boards are already drawn from local communities, KNUT expects the model to produce stronger, more accountable governance than fragmented leadership across separate institutions.
ALSO READ:
KNUT, KUPPET differ over proposal to retain JSS in comprehensive schools
KNUT’s third major ask concerns teacher preparation. Drawing on Kenya’s rollout of Competency-Based Education (CBE) since 2017, the union recalls a rocky transition: teachers were often deployed to teach subjects they had never been trained for, particularly when Junior School introduced new learning areas. That gap, KNUT says, hit hardest just as the first cohorts of Grade 9 learners prepared to choose Senior School pathways.
The lesson, in the union’s view, is that curriculum reform without matching investment in teachers doesn’t work. KNUT wants the Basic Education Bill to embed a standing requirement for continuous in-service training, run by the State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education. It points out that teachers currently shoulder the cost of upskilling themselves, in areas from artificial intelligence to pedagogical content knowledge, often on their own time and money. A statutory training mandate, the union argues, would let the ministry and TSC identify capacity gaps and respond systematically rather than leaving individual teachers to catch up alone.
ALSO READ: KESSHA demands funding guarantees, legal protection for principals in education reform Bills
Finally, KNUT is pressing for formal representation on the KICD’s governing council, through the KICD (Amendment) Bill, 2026.
The union frames this as a matter of information flow rather than turf. Because KNUT’s structure connects it to teachers on a daily basis, the union says it is positioned to feed the council real-time, first-hand data on how curriculum delivery is actually working in classrooms. That, KNUT argues, would sharpen the council’s policymaking and raise the professional standing of teachers as the people who ultimately deliver the curriculum.
KNUT closes its memorandum with a direct appeal to lawmakers: retain SEPU under the Ministry of Education, entrench comprehensive schools in law, mandate continuous teacher training, and give the union a formal voice inside KICD. The union says all four asks are meant to strengthen implementation of CBE, not obstruct it.
By Benedict Aoya
Get more stories from our website: Education News
To write to us or offer feedback, you can reach us at: editor@educationnews.co.ke
You can also follow our social media pages on Twitter: Education News KE and Facebook: Education News Newspaper for timely updates.
>> Click here to stay up-to-date with trending regional stories
