Lawyers sue Education ministry over alleged missing, mixed subject combinations in KEMIS

Students who will be transitioning from junior secondary to senior school this year may have allegedly selected undesirable subjects and pathways, the High Court has been told.

Two lawyers, Omwenga Ongegu and John Ominde, in their case against the Education Cabinet Secretary, his Principal Secretary and the Attorney General, claim that learners chose their career paths in the Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS) selection and placement portal without allegedly being told that the list of subjects was incomplete.

At the same time, the two also alleged that the KEMIS mechanism also allegedly conceals 90 per cent of the schools offering a given subject combination, without disclosing the same to an applicant.

“A number of schools, including Mangu High School and other schools exhibited and marked “OO-6”, are reflected on the KEMIS portal as offering three or fewer subject combinations, and that this pattern extends to schools specifically designated to serve learners with disabilities, including Moi Girls Nairobi, Murang’a School for the Hearing Impaired, Wajir Special Secondary School for the Deaf and Kasarani Treeside Secondary School for the Deaf,” they claimed.

The two stated that there are 418 subject combinations listed on the KEMIS. Out of these, the court heard, 28 have no school listed against them at all, while 27 have only one school. Ongegu, who swore an affidavit, explained that a review of KEMIS reveals that some subject combinations were listed as available, but none of the listed schools is offering the same.

 He further stated that, for example, Community Service Learning is a subject treated as compulsory and testable for every learner in senior school. However, in KEMIS, he said, it does not appear in any of the combinations.

“ I aver that the real difficulty lies in the absence of clarity on how Community Service Learning will be treated for purposes of future course eligibility through the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service, given that the pathway and subject combination a learner selects now already narrows the courses available to that learner ,” he said.

For those who are interested in pursuing Engineering and law, the lawyer claimed, he or she is unable to since Engineering will require a combination of three science subjects while the law requires humanities subjects. He insisted that Community Service Learning cannot be equivalent to Geography, History and Citizenship, Christian Religious Education, Islamic Religious Education and Hindu Religious Education.

According to him, Fine Arts, Media Technology, Marine and Fisheries, Mandarin Chinese, Indigenous Language, Literature in English, Fasihi ya Kiswahili, Theatre and Film, and Sports and Recreation do not appear anywhere among the subject requirements published for any course on the portal of the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS).

He argued that the choices as contained in KEMIS do not align with the individual talents, interests and aspirations.

Ongegu also claimed that a number of schools were unable to properly update their subject combination profiles on the portal, with the effect that learners are denied the opportunity to select those schools even where the schools in fact offer a wider range of combinations.

“ I aver, as a lawyer, that a decision cannot properly be described as informed, in the sense that representation claims to enable, where the data necessary to know the future consequences of a subject choice remains incomplete, unverified or unpublished, and that this misalignment ought to be corrected now, at the point of Senior School selection, rather than deferred until the current cohort reaches the point of applying for degree and diploma courses,” he continued.

The lawyer claimed that the Ministry had not explained why there were missing combinations, while some of those available had no schools or very few schools nationally.

The two want the court to bar the ministry from finalizing the placement until the case is heard and determined.

They stated that since the current Grade 9 cohort is due to sit the 2026 Kenya Junior School Education Assessment (KJSEA) from October 26, 2026, the court should intervene as the STEM pathway is allegedly the most affected.

“The subject combination coded ST1048, comprising Biology, Chemistry and Physics under the Pure Sciences track within the STEM pathway, is among the combinations most severely affected, with the one thousand record cap displaying only 1,000 of the 10,515 schools that in fact offer that combination nationally, representing approximately 9.51 per cent, or less than ten per cent, of the true total,” he claimed.

He insisted that the alleged misalignment ought to be corrected, or else children will have limited choices of pursuing degrees and diplomas after senior school.

The two want the court to force the Ministry to publish a complete list of schools offering every subject combination, along with the accurate list of subjects associated with each combination.