KNEC decries Sh3.7 billion shortfall, calls for disbursement

Administration of this year’s examinations is facing financial challenges that may also affect marking and release of results, it has emerged.

MPs heard on Wednesday that the collection of question papers from the containers and payment of thousands of contracted personnel could be crippled if the full money is not released immediately.

A total of 342,687 contracted professionals have been engaged in the administration of the assessments and examinations, comprising centre managers, supervisors, invigilators, security officers, Ministry of Education staff, as well as personnel from the Interior and National Administration.

For marking of KJSEA and KCSE, the Council anticipates using over 40,000 examiners for the structured question papers, who are expected to report on November 5.

These details emerged when Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba appeared before the National Assembly Education Committee, chaired by Julius Melly (Tinderet MP).

Ogamba told MPs that the examination body urgently needs the money for adequate examination and assessment processes.

He said that the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) requires additional budgetary support to adequately fund this year’s examination and assessment processes in addition to clearing outstanding bills.

According to the CS, the Council’s approved recurrent budget this financial year had an allocation of Sh5.9 billion for national assessments and examinations.

Of these, Sh3 billion was meant for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), Sh2 billion for the Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA), and another Sh900 million for the Kenya Primary School Education Assessment (KPSEA).

He said there was no allocation at all for the School-Based Assessment (SBA).

“This is against a total requirement of Sh12.723 billion, being Sh8.008 billion for KCSE, Sh3.566 billion for KJSEA, Sh1.062 billion for KPSEA and Sh87.3 million for SBA. The deficit was thus Sh6.8 billion.”

The CS, however, said that in September, the National Treasury communicated the grant of additional funding under Supplementary I amounting to Sh3.1 billion. The deficit has therefore reduced to Sh3.723 billion.

"We have written to the National Treasury to seek an additional budget to address the foregoing deficit. We have also sought a disbursement to enable the Council to adequately fund this year’s examination and assessment processes and clear outstanding pending bills," Ogamba said.

The CS made the remarks on Wednesday when he appeared before the National Assembly Committee on Education, accompanied by the KNEC Chief Executive, Dr David Njengere.

It emerged that the promise to release results for KPSEA and KJSEA by December could not be realised if the money is not released in time.

Ogamba also said KCSE results could be released by January. This, too, it emerged, may not be achievable.

The Council will have machine-scored responses, for which reading by the Optical Mark Readers will commence from the end of the KPSEA and KJSEA assessments.

Njengere explained that the Council has been experiencing perennial funding challenges, and even with the Sh5.9 billion allocation, they had to pay a pending bill of Sh1.08 billion, hence they started with Sh4.9 billion.

“The cure should be that funding for exams should not be based on a grant but on capitation. We do not base it on how many candidates we have and therefore how many papers we need to print or how many examiners we need—it is based on a grant system.
If we change that principle and say the budgeting process should be based on things like how many centres and containers we have and all that, I do not know what the current system is based on—it is just a figure,” Njengere explained.

During the meeting, the CS was also required to explain the status of capitation, given that schools require funds to purchase other critical items for laboratories and other apparatus for KCSE.

Committee Chairman Julius Melly said schools need to procure some essentials, and if they do not have capitation, they cannot move.
“If schools do not have capitation, how do you expect them to continue? They also require money to fuel vehicles. Principals of schools cannot move between the school and the examination centre because the money that the examination council gives is not enough. The principals are expected to move from the schools to the exam centre in the morning and evening, and without capitation, they can’t move,” Melly said.

In response to MPs’ questions about some schools still running and never having been funded, the CS said the Ministry is looking into issues of 29 secondary schools that are not in the system to qualify to apply for capitation.

But in terms of capitation generally, the CS told the committee that the capitation for Term Three was based on the verification exercise the Ministry was undertaking, brought about by queries raised by the Auditor-General.

“We thought it was a critical time for us to take stock and find out issues of enrollment, and what we were doing is that every period or every day we were finishing the verification exercise, we were releasing funds to those schools,” he explained.

By the end of the verification exercise, Ogamba said there were 990 schools—out of which 570 were primary and 320 others were secondary—which had not submitted the data on their school numbers.

The Ministry decided to base the disbursement on Term Two numbers and release 50 per cent of the capitation as the process of verification continues, which involves physically finding out if the schools exist to ensure that schools receive monies.

But Melly said examination is a national security exercise; money has to be paid, and if there are issues in a particular school, they should be dealt with later because schools do not have any other time to sit for that exam.

He said the agreement was to have all schools receive their share of capitation by last week.

“The issue of verification has never taken place, and that’s why we have been having this issue of ghost schools and over-enrollment, and we decided to take the bull by its horns. When we started the exercise, we sent out the tool, but they never submitted the data, so we wanted to find out now—we go there to the field and find out,” Ogamba said.

“For example, we have 6,041 schools that are below the threshold. How are they registered? Who is behind it? I’m going to come with that data, and once we do that, there will be nowhere to hide for anybody because the schools also belong to people,” he said.

But the committee sought an explanation on how the schools not properly registered were able to register for examinations.

Njengere explained: “When we are dealing with candidates, there is a difference between registering a candidate and registering an exam centre. We register the candidates. So, if the candidates were availed on our system and they provided us with the index number and all these things, we cannot ask why they are not in the capitation or anything.”