NAIROBI, Kenya – A funding shortfall is threatening the operations of public schools across the country, with Education Cabinet Secretary Migos Ogamba coming under intense scrutiny in Parliament over massive delays and shortfalls in the disbursement of capitation funds.
Appearing before the National Assembly Committee on Education, Ogamba admitted that the Ministry does not have a verified total for pending bills owed to schools, even as lawmarkers suggested the amount could be as high as Sh 64 billion which has accumulated over the years.
“I didn’t come with that figure, the figure raised by Hon Robert Mbui on Sh 64 Billion could be correct. The question we are grappling with is what do we do with it? Yet we’re still not getting what we budgeted for,” he said.
Documents tabled before the committee showed the approved capitation for secondary schools is Sh 22,244 per learner annually, yet for Term 1 of 2025, the Ministry only managed to disburse Sh 8,818.61 per student.
This covered just 50% of the budgeted amount. The Ministry disbursed KSh 28.8 billion for 3.2 million learners, leaving a deficit of KSh 7.5 billion in the financial year.
At the primary level, schools received KSh 1,420 per child annually, disbursed termly in a 50:30:20 ratio.
Despite a revised recommended rate of KSh 2,238 proposed by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reform, funding remains below need.
Junior secondary schools are similarly underfunded, receiving only half of the KSh 15,043 allocated annually per learner.
The data presented also showed that in Primary Schools,the capitation amounted allocated for co-curricular activities is Sh 76 per learner every year but Sh 40 is retained at the Ministry of Education for the running of co-curricular activities in the national level.
Only Sh 36 per learner is disbursed to schools which is less than 50 percent allocated to each learner with MPs questioning the quality assurance of non-curricular activities in schools with the half of the allocation being retained at the Ministry headquarters.
Lawmakers expressed alarm at the dire state of school financing raising concerns that the status of free education in schools is in jeopardy due to non-disbursement of funds by the exchequer.
The committee chair questioned whether the country could continue to afford free education given the exponential rise in student numbers and stagnating resources.
“We bestowed it on ourselves that we should have free and fair education. Are we really able to offer that, with the increased numbers and lack of resources ?” he posed.
Deputy Minority Leader Robert Mbui who had raised the statement on delayed capitation to the Ministry of Education insisted that the government should admit that free education is no longer sustainable given the constrained resources.
“It’s better telling parents that we cost share, rather than insisting that we have free education, when we don’t,” Mbui argued.
Narok Woman Representative Rebecca Tonkei expressed concerns that school management are forced to run operations in schools with meagre resources due to the persistent budgetary shortfall.
“How free is education in Kenya since principals are being told to plan with what they have. How do principals run schools if they are forced to work with what they have budgeted for,” she insisted.
Kibra MP Peter Orero questioned why the Ministry of Education is consistently sidelining and interdicting school administrators when they charge extra levies in school yet the government was failing to disburse enough monies to facilitate free education.
“For the last ten years schools haven’t been receiving full capitation. It means schools have a deficit of Sh 9000 per year per child. When the head teacher complain some are interdicted and victimized.”
The Ministry attributed delays in disbursement partly to late releases by the National Treasury and partly to data errors in school submissions to the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS).
Ogamba pushed for the ring-fencing of education funds saying it will alleviate the situation of urging MPs and the National Treasury to treat school financing as a protected priority under the Constitution to avert the persistent shortfall of funds.
“We need to ring-fence the education fund to ensure we have enough resources to deal with issues affecting students and schools,” he said.
The Education Cabinet Secretary asserted that free education remains government policy, though he acknowledged the operational difficulties due to delayed exchequer releases that has affected curricular and non-curricular activities in schools.
“As to whether we have free education in the country, the short answer is that we are offering free education,” Ogamba stated.
