Education stakeholders have called on the government adopt the former school based admission system, and drop the current centralized grade 10 placement.
National Parents Association Kisumu chapter secretary, Carilus Okaka said the old system will go a long way in easing the agony both parents and students are at the moment undergoing.
Speaking in Kisumu, Okaka said the rigid placement method being applied by the ministry was tedious and a source of boarding to parents and students alike.
Okaka said school heads know what to do with admission processes in terms of space and student needs hence the need to give them a free hand in the process.
The official said it is wrong to place students in far flung day learning institution yet they do not have guardians to stay with in those areas.
He said Kenya education management information system has locked out thousands of needy students who could otherwise have been assisted through the old model of admission.
He noted that the former system, which used the NEMIS portal, was more transparent and helped maintain regional balance and equity across the 47 counties.
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“Unlike previous years, principals currently have no access to the Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) results of learners placed in their institutions.
We do not know what marks place a student in a national, extra-county, or county school, and we are waiting to see if merit has truly been followed. But we have fears,” he said.
Okaka said there are high-performing students who were placed in Cluster Four (C4), previously sub-county schools with parents trying to review placements while at the same time encountering technical glitches that blocked the process, even in clear cases of mismatches.
He noted that some Grade 9 children who scored 67 points were placed in a local day school, but attempts to request reviews in such obvious cases failed due to system errors.
To address the concerns, the Ministry of Education announced that the portal for placement revisions would reopen on January 6, 2026 allowing students to select their choices.
At the same time Okaka proposed a system that allows parents to approach schools directly to seek available vacancies, which would then be uploaded into KEMIS for Ministry approval.
He said the ministry should revert to the old system where parents could seek vacancies and principals could feed that data into the portal with approval from the ministry.
“If 100 students placed in your school don’t show up, we should be allowed to fill those spaces,” Okaka said.
He said fellow parents are also concerned that the current placement rules lack clarity and could compromise standards at top-tier schools.
Okaka said many parents are anxious on senior school issue since they are completely in the dark.
“They have no idea what needs to be done; some are already calling us to book a slot for January admission,” he said.
By Fredrick Odiero
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