The Ministry of Education, MoE has said that the number of learners in the Country could drop by 10 per cent in the ongoing schools data verification process which has so far unearthed ghost learners and schools.
This was revealed by the Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok who said that the exercise could also result in a considerable decrease in the number of schools. The process has so far verified data for 20,000 schools and led to the disbursement of capitation to the same.
“We are expecting a huge reduction in the number of students by 5 to 10 per cent, and we are also expecting huge reduction in the number of schools. I wouldn’t tell you the percentage now, but we are expecting a huge reduction, and it’s going to affect results, which is going to impact the resources we are sending to schools,”Bitok pointed out.
The government says the exercise which is expected to conclude by Friday this week had been briefly affected by internet supply disruption over the weekend.
PS added that all the 32,000 primary, junior and secondary schools have submitted their data for verification, 20,000 of those have been cleared and capitation released.
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“Out of the Ksh23 billion we have disbursed 60 per cent which is about Ksh13 billion and the process is ongoing even as we speak. The process of disbursement is still going on, we have teams doing the verifying,” he noted.
The government has in the past confirmed that it is not meeting the full capitation amount for learners. According to recommendations by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms, learners in junior secondary are entitled to capitation of Ksh.15,043 per year, while those in senior secondary ought to be getting Ksh.22,244 per year.
“As you are aware, we are currently going through the digitization process, to make sure we clean up, we are told there are ghosts’ schools, ghost students, there are ghosts everywhere, we have agreed that we have to remove the ghosts,” President William Ruto said.
That exercise is now nearing its end, and the results are all but confirming concerns raised by the auditor general on existence of irregularities in primary, junior and secondary school numbers and learners enrollment.
By Juma Ndigo
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