Education officials are trying to find out why more than two million primary school learners are missing from government records. The gap casts doubt on the enrolment data used to plan and fund schools, the Daily Nation reported.
The Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS) has registered about 5.05 million primary learners in public and private schools. The ministry expected 7.2 million. Fredrick Mujumba, the Director of Education in charge of KEMIS, gave the figures at the Kenya Comprehensive School Heads Association (KCSHA) annual conference in Mombasa, The Eastleigh Voice reported. His numbers showed 2,615,822 boys and 2,442,600 girls in primary schools.
The gap is smaller at other levels. Senior schools have 3,259,906 registered learners against an expected 3.5 million. Junior schools have about 3.18 million. Mujumba said this makes primary schools the ministry's main concern. He added that some institutions had joined the system but recorded no learners at all. "We didn't expect that, but it's something that we are working on to establish," he said.
Nelson Sifuna, Head of the Directorate of Field Coordination and Co-curricular Activities, gave the more than 15,000 school heads at the conference a blunt warning. Schools will not get government money for learners missing from KEMIS. "Two million of our children have not been captured on Kemis. That means you will not be funded," he said. Sifuna said heads had complained about not receiving their full capitation. But KEMIS is the only system the ministry will use to allocate funds, he said. He urged schools to work with the ICT officers the ministry has hired to help them.
The government began moving from the old National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) to KEMIS in 2024. The new platform is meant to provide verifiable enrolment records and track pupils through school. It also guides how capitation, teachers and textbooks are shared out.
Stephen Barongo, Head of the Directorate of Primary Education, said the ministry has dropped the requirement for birth certificates before learners can be registered. Many schoolchildren did not have the document, which made registration hard for schools. Mujumba said the ministry is also building a learner registry and plans a human resource registry to improve planning.