NAIVASHA, Kenya — The Ministry of Education is preparing to roll out a new digital learner-tracking system designed to monitor how much funding each student receives from early learning through university, in a move aimed at fixing long-standing gaps in education financing data.
Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba said the platform, which will be implemented under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) framework, will assign every learner a unique identification number, allowing all forms of support — public, county, private and donor-funded — to be tracked in one place.
Speaking to legislators during the 2026 Legislative Retreat in Naivasha, Ogamba said Kenya currently lacks accurate data on the real cost of educating a child, making it difficult to plan, allocate resources fairly, and assess whether constitutional obligations are being met.
“We actually, as a country, do not know how much it costs to educate a child from Grade One all the way to university,” Ogamba said.
He explained that education funding comes from multiple sources, including government capitation, Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and county bursaries, private sector sponsorships and donations — a fragmented system that has made it impossible to calculate the total investment per learner.
According to Ogamba, existing government capitation rates — ranging from Sh1,540 to Sh22,000 per learner — were set following a task force review, but a comprehensive analysis of actual education costs has never been conducted.
“No analysis has been done to determine what is the actual cost,” he said.
The new digital platform will consolidate all contributions under each learner’s profile, enabling policymakers to determine whether current funding levels are sufficient to guarantee free and compulsory basic education, as required under Article 53 of the Constitution.
“If we put all these funds in one basket, we can then come up with an actual amount that we can say what it costs to educate a child,” Ogamba noted.
Beyond financing, the Cabinet Secretary also addressed the persistent challenge of teacher shortages and uneven deployment across schools.
He said the government has so far recruited 100,000 teachers, with plans to hire an additional 16,000 by 2027.
Ogamba added that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) will use enrolment data from the new system to guide teacher redistribution, especially as CBC reforms reshape class structures.
“You will see that some schools will not be having Grade 10 students, or Form Two students. TSC will now reallocate those teachers to schools that do not have enough,” he said.
He stressed that linking learner funding data with teacher deployment is critical to improving education outcomes nationwide.
“We have to be courageous about it so that we have a clear picture. We need to know how much money is allocated to each child,” Ogamba said.
The ministry expects the learner-tracking system to be fully operational in the next academic year, providing government agencies, educators and stakeholders with reliable data to guide education financing and policy decisions.
