- Machogu said the delays are mainly because the government has to balance many things including public debt payments, salaries, among others.
- “This money does not come from the pockets of President William Ruto, neither does it come from the pocket of Machogu,” he said.
Image: BRIAN OTIENO
Education CS Ezekiel Machogu on Friday said Kenyans must pay taxes for the government to effectively and efficiently fund education.
Machogu said all the education funding comes from taxes that Kenyans pay and the delays in disbursing capitation to schools is because of delays in receiving the funds from the National Treasury.
Speaking as he closed the 47th Kenya Secondary School Heads Association conference, he said the delays are mainly because the government has to balance many things including public debt payment, and salaries, among others.
“This money does not come from the pockets of President William Ruto, neither does it come from the pocket of Machogu,” he said.
Machogu was responding to pleas from Kessha chair Willie Kuria to release the remainder of this year’s capitation which is Sh10,000 per student.
On Wednesday, Basic Education PS Belio Kipsang told the principals that henceforth, schools will be receiving the full Sh22,244 capitation per student.
Kuria said for a long time schools have been receiving Sh17,000 but then deductions for the infrastructure accounts reduce it to Sh12,000 before further deductions for centralized procurements reduce it to Sh10,460.
“When capitation started in 2008, we were receiving Sh10,600. It means then that today we are receiving less than what we were receiving in 2008 bearing in mind the inflation."
“That is why schools have been having major financial challenges and that is why so many of these schools have been taken to court,” he said.
The Kessha chair said about 300,000 students have not been given capitation at all.
He said a good number of the current Form One students did not get capitation because capitation was pegged on the number of candidates who left last year, who were less than those who joined Form One this year.
“The Form Ones are over one million. The candidates who left were about 700,000. So there are about 300,000 to 400,000 students in Form One who have not been given capitation at all,” he said.
Textbooks provided by the Education ministry, Kuria said, are shallow and full of errors and teachers have refused to use them.
This means schools end up buying textbooks from their funds.
“At the same time, there are no reference books given. So we go ahead and buy the reference books as well as textbooks,” he said.
He said the textbooks are shallow and full of errors because the work was given to one or two publishers, who are then overwhelmed with the work but since they have to deliver, they do a shoddy job.
“And when students are given these books and they lose them, we ask for replacements which are of higher quality. So sometimes, which is not right to say, we are happy when they lose them so that we get better copies from the bookshops,” Kuria said.
The Kessha said this year, they have received Sh12,000 and are expecting the remaining Sh10,000 this year.
For a day school to run for a year with the current inflation, they should be given Sh27,000 per student per year.
“But we are not saying we should get the Sh27,000. If we get the Sh22,244, we will plan ourselves,” Kuria said.
Machogu said the government is in the process of building more classrooms in readiness for the inaugural Grade 9 learners next year.
He said the government has already given out Sh3.5 billion for the construction of 3,500 new classrooms.
“Additionally, we have given out another Sh3.9 billion to the 290 constituencies which will also be able to build a similar number and in the next financial year we are hoping that we will secure more funding for the construction of a total of 16,000 classrooms by the end of 2024,” he said.