The Ministry of Education, (MoE) has unveiled tough new rules to ensure capitation funds only reach legitimate institutions, and enhance accountability of the funds released.
This was revealed by the Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba, who said that State Department for Basic Education is carrying out a comprehensive data-cleaning exercise to ensure accuracy in the allocation of grants.
According to Ogamba, new schools applying for capitation will now be required to submit additional documents. These include the Free Day Secondary Education (FDSE) application form, a valid registration certificate, minutes of a Board of Management meeting, bank account details with designated signatories, a TSC appointment letter for the principal and a forwarding letter from the sub-county director of education containing the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) and Unique Identification Codes (UIC).
He added that the ministry has introduced assessment and index numbers to complement the Unique Personal Identifier (UPI), ensuring learners are reflected in only one school through the KNEC database.
Ogamba noted in the ongoing verification process, the officials are verifying school UICs, authenticating bank account details, cross-checking enrolment with the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) and reconciling records against past disbursements, and any anomalies detected will be investigated and appropriate legal action taken.
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“So far, more than 29,000 of the country’s 32,000 primary and secondary schools have been verified. The ministry had already uncovered more than 50,000 ghost learners by cross-checking enrolment records against the NEMIS.”
“We have taken steps to reconcile school records and remove anomalies. Before capitation funds are released, the ministry verifies that each school is properly registered and has a substantive principal appointed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC),” Ogamba said.
Once completed, he said the government will fully implement the Ksh22,244 capitation per learner in secondary schools.
“We are no longer relying on birth certificates. Previously, NEMIS excluded some learners because they lacked the documents. We have now developed a tool to verify student numbers by gender and grade, from Grade 1 to Grade 9, to ensure accuracy,” the CS said.
In the new audit template, head teachers in both public and private institutions will be required to provide the school name, UIC and type. For Grades 1 to 6, schools must submit enrolment figures by gender. Junior schools are required to provide data for Grades 7 to 9, while secondary schools must submit statistics for Forms 2 to 4, since no Form 1 learners exist under the current 8-4-4 transition.
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Additionally, institutions must present detailed learner information, including the UPI, assessment number, full name, gender, date of birth, birth entry number and any disability status.
School heads have now been urged to submit all learners’ UPIs for verification before funds can be disbursed.
In the past, the ministry relied solely on NEMIS to allocate funds, but learners without birth certificates were often excluded. School heads have long complained that NEMIS is unreliable and fails to capture all students.
This comes after the exposé by the Office of the Auditor General which revealed that 33 non-existent schools had received billions of shillings in capitation over the past four years.
The report which rattled the whole education sector saw the Ministry of Education move with speed to carry out verification process to weed out the ghost students and schools, the process which is now at the tail end.
By Juma Ndigo
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