The ongoing schools data verification has unearthed ghost learners, with the Ministry of Education predicting that the total number of learners in the country could drop by up to 10 per cent. 

Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok has said that the exercise could also result in a considerable decrease in the number of schools.

The process has so far verified data for 20,000 schools and led to the disbursement of capitation to the same.

Four weeks into the final term in the school calendar and some schools across the country are yet to get their capitation, both at primary, junior and secondary schools. The impact of these delays in capitation are crippling activities in some schools. 

A school head who spoke anonymously to Citizen TV said, “Wale ambao wanafaa kuleta vyakula vingine kama vile mchele wamekataa katakata wanasema lazima walipwe, kwa sababu pesa ni nyingi ambazo bado hatujawalipa.”

The release of funds to schools for this term and beyond has been tied to the verification of schools’ profile, management, enrollment numbers and bank account details data, an exercise that has been ongoing since the start of the term. 

That exercise is now nearing its end, and the results are all but confirming concerns raised by the auditor general on existence of irregularities in primary, junior and secondary school numbers and learners enrollment.

The government says the exercise which is expected to conclude by Friday this week had been briefly affected by internet supply disruption over the weekend. 

All the 32,000 primary, junior and secondary schools have submitted their data for verification, 20,000 of those have been cleared and capitation released.

“Out of the Ksh.23 billion we have disbursed 60 per cent which is about Ksh.13 billion and the process is ongoing even as we speak. The process of disbursement is still going on, we have teams doing the verifying,” he noted. 

The government has in the past confirmed that it is not meeting the full capitation amount for learners. According to recommendations by the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms, learners in junior secondary are entitled to capitation of Ksh.15,043 per year, while those in senior secondary ought to be getting Ksh.22,244 per year.