Capitation withheld from 29 schools pending verification, Education CS Ogamba tells MPs

The Ministry of Education has not yet released capitation funds to 29 schools across the country amid an ongoing verification exercise aimed at identifying ghost schools and non-compliant institutions.

Appearing before the National Assembly Departmental Committee on Education on Wednesday, Education CS Julius Ogamba said the affected schools are newly established and are being assessed before funds can be disbursed.

The revelations came after Narok County MP Rebecca Tonkei expressed concern that a secondary school in her region has never received the funds to date.

“Capitation affects examinations. I have a secondary school in Narok County that has never received capitation and is supposed to run examinations. What are you doing about it?” she posed.

Ogamba confirmed that 29 schools have not received capitation, explaining that the third-term funds were released based on results from the verification exercise.

“We are working on it,” Ogamba said while addressing the 29 secondary schools.

However, the Committee expressed serious concern over the issue, with Committee Chair Julius Melly questioning why the schools were allowed to register for national examinations despite not being beneficiaries of government capitation.

“Someone is sleeping on the job…why did you allow the 29 schools to register for exams, yet you knew they are not beneficiaries of capitation? You are required to enable candidates from those schools to sit for the exams and go,” he said.

In response, Ogamba explained that it is currently unclear whether the 29 schools even have registered candidates. He noted that since the schools were not included in the capitation system, funds cannot be disbursed until registration queries are resolved

“We cannot even establish, as of now, whether the 29 schools have candidates in the first place. They were not in the system for capitation, so we cannot disburse capitation to the schools, yet there are registration queries and some issues they need to fix,” he said.

He also disclosed that 570 primary schools out of 990 had not submitted data to the Ministry despite having received 50 per cent of their capitation by the end of the verification exercise, highlighting ongoing gaps in compliance and reporting.

He noted that at least 6,000 schools, including primary, junior secondary and senior secondary, are non-compliant with ministry guidelines required to access government capitation, with some having as few as 45 pupils.

“Over 900 primary and secondary schools had not released information for their numbers to the ministry for capitation,” he said.

The CS also decried that his ministry is grappling with a Sh3.2 billion deficit needed to conduct the remaining national examinations in 2025.

“As to why the payment to examiners is delayed is because of the exchequer release. We are trying to see that once the budgets are made for issues like exams, the budget is not slashed,” Ogamba said.

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• Education CS Ogamba tells MPs

Despite the shortfalls, he assured that the government is fully funding all ongoing national examinations, including KCSE, KPSEA and KJSEA, warning school heads against demanding any payments from parents.

“We will make sure that the money is available, the payments are done, and the examinations are done seamlessly. No instruction has been given to any principal and heads of institutions to ask for money from the parents for examinations. That’s the responsibility of the government,” he said.