- The Auditor-General has flagged millions of shillings in public school payments to KESSHA as irregular, arguing the subscription fees should be paid by principals individually.
- Schools have transferred varying amounts to the association with cumulative collections potentially exceeding Sh1 billion.
- KESSHA chairperson Willie Kuria has defended the payments as legitimate member contributions, though the stated Sh500 monthly subscription does not account for the much larger sums recorded in school accounts.
Public secondary schools across Kenya have been channelling millions of shillings in taxpayer money to the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA), a welfare lobby for principals, in payments the Auditor-General has now flagged as improper and potentially unlawful.
An analysis of audit reports covering public secondary schools shows that in nearly every financial statement, schools recorded annual payments to KESSHA. Nancy Gathungu has classified the expenditure as irregular, arguing that because KESSHA is a welfare association serving principals in their individual capacity, its subscription fees ought to be deducted from head teachers’ own payslips rather than drawn from public school accounts.
The amounts transferred vary considerably from one institution to another; Mang’u High School recorded the highest payment at Sh2.77 million, while at the other end of the scale, Starehe Boys Centre and School transferred just Sh66,500, Alliance High School paid Sh2,125,550, Moi Forces Academy contributed Sh2,052,800, and Moi Girls Secondary School Kamanungu transferred Sh1.82 million.
St Mary’s School Yala paid Sh1,523,640, Alliance Girls High School contributed Sh1.42 million, Chania High School paid Sh1,070,955, Utumishi Academy transferred Sh1,023,820, and Nairobi School paid Sh996,800.
Taken cumulatively, the scale of these transfers is striking. With more than 7,300 head teachers each potentially contributing an average of roughly Sh137,000, KESSHA’s total annual collections could cross the Sh1 billion mark, a figure that has placed the association in a precarious position.
Should the Auditor-General’s finding be enforced, principals would be required to fund the lobby’s activities out of their own pockets rather than relying on school resources, a shift that could significantly disrupt how the organisation operates.
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In her report on Mang’u High School, covering the financial year ended June 2025, Gathungu noted that KESSHA is not recognised within the government funding system and that there is no assurance the association has put in place effective, efficient and transparent financial management and internal control systems to handle the money transferred to it by schools.
Separately, other audit reports found that the payments contravened Regulation 23(2)(c) of the Public Finance Management (National Government) Regulations, 2015, which requires any accounting officer transferring public funds to another entity to first obtain written assurance that the recipient operates sound financial management and internal control systems.
KESSHA chairperson Willie Kuria, who is the principal of Murang’a High School, defended the transfers as legitimate member contributions used to fund the lobby’s activities. He explained that the funds collected go toward running the organisation and are deposited into a dedicated clearance account, since there is no other mechanism through which the contributions are managed.
“KESSHA is a registered association, and members contribute Sh500 every month; what comes there is money for activities, and there is no other way other than to put money in the clearance account”, Kuria said in a past interview as quoted by one of the local dailies,
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That explanation, though, leaves a significant gap unaccounted for. At Sh500 per member each month, KESSHA’s roughly 7,000-strong membership would be expected to generate an estimated Sh42 million a year, or about Sh3.5 million a month, a figure far below the cumulative sums reflected in individual school accounts, some of which alone ran into millions of shillings.
Gathungu’s report further highlighted several systemic weaknesses facing public secondary schools more broadly, among them non-functional procurement units, inaccurate student enrolment data that affects capitation disbursements, weak asset management practices, a failure by many schools to prepare school improvement plans, and non-compliance with both the Data Protection Act and the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act.
By Hillary Muhalya
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