Better funding and management is what education sector needs

Schools are always in financial crisis because heads of institutions are not trained in financial management. [iStockphoto]

The Kenyan public education sector is financed through taxes and payment of fees by parents, guardians, private firms and international donor agencies.

The government directs funds to schools through the Free Primary Education grants (FPE), Free Day Secondary Funds (FSD), Constituency Development Funds (CDF), HELB and the County Development Funds in devolved units.

On the other hand, parents meet direct costs, including boarding fees, activity fees, uniform, transportation and lunch. Indirect or opportunity costs include the household labour and income that could have been earned by children while in school.

These justify the need for schools to respond to internal and external demand for accountability and transparency through developed standards for assessment of resource utilisation and learning outcomes.

With the introduction of free and compulsory primary education, financial resources for support of schools are not likely to increase at the expected rate. Yet, the demand for secondary education continues to bulge. Kenya has been funding education in respect to every individual learner through an identification mechanism of registration called NEMIS.

Despite recommendations by successive education commissions to address concerns of access, relevance, transition, equity, governance, finance and quality in education, the Ministry of Education hardly processes timely, accurate and reliable education data and information.

These includes the number of public, private and non-formal schools; teacher staffing; enrolment of pupils and students in each school; special needs teachers and learners; teaching resources; establishing deserving cases to be awarded bursaries, school connectivity to the national grid; integration of ICT in schools; tooling schools; reliability of fresh water supply in schools and distribution of non-teaching staff.

If education statistics are not timely, accurately and reliably delivered to intended users, then education will always remain in a crisis; there will be no proper planning, budgeting, funding and execution of the government education plans.

To avoid perennial crises in the education sector, the national government should develop a comprehensive Education Management Information System to facilitate the delivery of timely, accurate and reliable education data and information in support of planning, budgeting, funding, auditing and the general management of the sector.

The framework through which school funds are allocated, distributed, governed and monitored from time immemorial has been handled in a haphazard manner, leading to never-ending crises in schools, with learners and schools missing the entire allocation, getting the money in bits or in some extreme cases, unscrupulous education officials misappropriating the funds.

The Sh30 billion Kenya School Laptop Project stalled midstream after funds and some computers and laptops disappeared into the thin air. Though the government admitted that the project was not viable, no audit has been carried out to establish who was behind the scam.

Free Primary Education funds and Free Day Secondary Education allocations are either delayed or allocated in small bits that cannot afford schools to carry out their programmes. This, indeed, leads to financial crisis in the affected institutions.

Schools are always in financial crisis because heads of institutions are not trained in financial management. There is no proper school funds auditing to establish how the finances are used. Skewed and/or inadequate funding may cause inconsistencies in the implementation of the new competency-based curriculum. University education, training and research play a significant role in promoting economic development.

Besides, universities are responsible for production of human capital, research and innovation, and community service. Public universities are not fully funded despite implementing new funding methods that allow the State to cater for over 80 per cent of the students' fees.

The government disburses less than 50 per cent of the funds to universities, which leads to crisis-after-crisis within the institutions. The talk for timely and increased funding to universities has been elusive with various taskforces making a wide range of recommendations on how the institutions should be funded.

There has been general under-funding of the universities sub-sector by 49.5 per cent. The funding has been going down while the number of students keeps on increasing. This has led to a serious crisis in universities. Since Kenya has experienced phenomenal growth in the university education, universities should be made autonomous in their functions, and should not rely entirely on government funds and other forms of assistance.

Income generation entities set up by universities should be allowed to operate under the universities. This will end financial crises in universities. Timely disbursement of funds to schools, colleges and universities, prudent management of the disbursed funds and regular standardised audits in our schools stands between our current state of hopelessness and a new energised education system. Knut being a professional organisation proposes quality in management of public resources for a prosperous education sector.