Four weeks into the final term of the school year, many schools are struggling because of delays in capitation funds. Some institutions have not received any money, making it difficult to run their daily activities.
A school head who spoke anonymously to Citizen TV said, “Wale ambao wanafaa kuleta vyakula vingine kama vile mchele wamekataa katakata wanasema lazima walipwe, kwa sababu pesa ni nyingi ambazo bado hatujawalipa.”
The government has tied the release of these funds to an ongoing verification exercise meant to clean up the data of schools across the country.
The process is checking the profiles of schools, management details, enrollment numbers and bank account records before capitation is released. So far, 20,000 schools have been cleared and have received their allocation.
The exercise has exposed major gaps that were long suspected.
“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.
His words reflect concerns that the auditor general had earlier raised on inflated enrollment figures.
Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok confirmed that the verification has revealed ghost learners and even schools that do not exist.
“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 said.
According to the ministry, out of Ksh.23 billion set aside for capitation, 60 per cent or about Ksh.13 billion has already been released.
The exercise, which was briefly affected by internet disruption, is expected to end by Friday with all 32,000 primary, junior and secondary schools having submitted their data.
The government has already admitted that it does not meet the full capitation requirements, with junior secondary learners entitled to Ksh.15,043 annually and senior secondary learners to Ksh.22,244.
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