Gov’t halts capitation for 29 schools in ongoing audit on ghost learners

At least 29 schools have not received capitation from the Ministry of Education over registration queries following an audit targeting ghost schools and learners in public schools across the country.

Education Cabinet Secretary Migos Ogamba, while appearing before the National Assembly Committee on Education on Wednesday, said 6,000 others are non-compliant to the ministry guidelines set in order to benefit from government capitation, even as his docket grapples with a Ksh.3.2 billion deficit needed to conduct the remaining national examinations in 2025.

The 6,000 schools - which include primary, junior secondary and senior secondary - did not meet the students’ population threshold, with some having as few as 45 pupils.

Education committee Chair MP Julius Melly said: “Someone is sleeping on the job…why did you allow the 29 schools to register for exams yet you knew they are not beneficiary of capitation? You are required to enable candidates from those schools to sit for the exams and go.”

The CS responded: “We cannot even establish as per 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.”

In addition, 570 primary schools out of 990 had not submitted data to the Ministry of Education despite receiving 50% of the capitation by the end of the verification exercise.