More than two million primary school learners are yet to appear in Kenya's national education database, raising concerns about school funding, teacher deployment and education planning.
Data presented by the Ministry of Education at the Kenya Comprehensive School Heads Association (KECSHA) conference in Mombasa shows that approximately 5.05 million primary school learners had been captured in the Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS), against an expected 7.2 million.
The figures, reported on Thursday, November 12, leave a gap of approximately 2.15 million learners.
Mujumba Obwoyere, the official overseeing KEMIS deployment, said the ministry was investigating why some registered schools had no learner records despite having been onboarded onto the platform.
The gap is significant because the government uses learner enrolment information to plan the distribution of resources, including school funding, textbooks, teachers and infrastructure.
During the conference, education officials warned school administrators that learners who are not registered in KEMIS could be excluded from capitation calculations.
Nelson Sifuna, the Ministry's Director of Field Coordination and Co-curricular Activities, urged school heads to ensure that all learners are entered into the system.
The ministry has also eased one registration requirement by allowing schools to capture learners without birth certificates using their parents' identification details.
However, the missing records do not automatically mean that 2.15 million children are out of school. The discrepancy concerns the number currently recorded in the digital database compared with the expected enrolment.
Education officials now face the task of verifying school submissions and identifying the reasons behind the gap.
Accurate records will be important in ensuring that government resources reach the learners and institutions they are intended to support.
Leave a Reply