All schools will now have to re-register through the Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS) as the government seeks to eliminate the threat of ghost schools.
Speaking during an interview on Egesa FM on Tuesday, August 5, Education Cabinet Secretary Migos Ogamba revealed investigations are ongoing to weed out all ghost schools; however, a more stringent strategy was needed to ensure such schools don't crop up again.
To ensure transparency and proper oversight, the ministry will deploy KEMIS, which will be used to register all legitimate schools and update existing data.
''Going forward, to solve the problem of ghost schools, it is to have all schools which had registered on NEMIS re-register at KEMIS, the new system, so that we have clean data,'' Ogamba explained.
''We use the system to know the school, where it is, the number of students, and the number of teachers. A credible system,'' Ogamba explained.
Ogamba maintained that running ghost schools was an offense, which he strongly condemned and could not defend.
''There is no government policy that supports this. That is a an offense, and I stand by it. So we have formed a team in the Ministry that is working with the auditor general; we flag this, and we deal with it once and for all,'' Ogamba continued.
KEMIS, which was an update of NEMIS, was originally designed to capture staff and student data, but now Ogamba has explained that schools will also have to give their data on the system to ensure there is no double entry.
Ogamba explained that education funds are sent directly to verified school-owned bank accounts, not individuals, a measure intended to curb misappropriation.
This comes after MPs revealed that part of the Ksh1.3 billion school infrastructure fund was channelled to ghost institutions in what they termed a well-planned fraud by officials within the ministry.
Concerns were raised that funds meant to improve learning facilities across the country were reportedly allocated to fake schools that only existed on paper, complete with fictitious enrolment data and forged locations.
The CS also addressed students' concerns on HELB and spoke on the recent university fee decrease. He revealed that university fees had been reduced by between 15 per cent and 30 per cent, a decision aimed at easing the financial burden on parents and guardians.
