Published by the People Daily Page 10 on 29th October 2025
Published by the Sunday Nation on 26th October 2025 page 18
In the current dispensation, being a school Principal or a Head Teacher should be classified as a high-risk profession- akin to a high contact extreme sport. Its nerve wrecking to run a school against high expectations from the employer (TSC), parents and learners without the requisite resources.
One school Principal hinted to me that managing a school without capitation leaves school managers dazed, almost to a point of severe depression. This is so since the whole burden of ensuring learners comfort and that of smooth running of studies by teachers is such a heavy and time-bound task. Imagine having to feed thousands of learners, ensuring constant flow of water, roadworthy school vehicles and paying for utility costs like electricity, security and kitchen fuel with less or no funds. With some parents barely able to clear fee balances dues to harsh economic realities and the ministry of education not meeting its obligation to release capitation funds on time, and up to the budgeted amounts, school managers can only pray and hope for miracles.
Failure to ensure that learners have adequate food, water and electricity can be a recipe for distress, which can lead to disastrous circumstances like riots and disruption of learning. For parents, even those who due to rigid economic circumstances do not also meet their part of the bargain, expect that their children receive adequate comfort and perform extremely well schools, often unaware of what the school heads go through. For the employer and the government, any disruption of learning and can lead to extreme reprimand including demotion and interdiction. As a society, we should know that if we give less to school managers, the less output we would get.
By beginning on September 2025, Kenyans were assured that school capitation funds was released after a data verification process. Interestingly it’s only 3,000 out of 32,000 schools received their third-term funds as of early September 2025, and others, despite piling bills were expected to receive theirs progressively. It is preposterous that the mediocre explanation given for the delay is because of an audit to eliminate irregularities like funds being sent to “ghost schools”. This is a very lame excuse and an indicator of laxity since we have school inspectors and criminal investigators who can deal with that matter and weed out the non-existent schools in less than 24 hours- if there is virtuous political goodwill.
The Ministry of Education under the leadership of Cabinet Secretary Mr. Julius Ogamba was supposed to send KSh. 22,244 per learner every year but chose to play games and adjusted this to 10,376. This would mean that 2,277.30 for tuition and 8,399.33 for operations. Surely, this should call for resign indictment on the part of the Ministry for putting into jeopardy, learning operations in this country.
It only gets worse when these amounts have not been submitted even as the learners have proceeded to close schools after third term elapsed. In others, either a fraction has been send. Kenya needs an independent audit on education operations. Apparently, there was reduction of Ksh. 260, 212.30 and 212.50 for terms 1, 2 and 3 totaling to 599.19 per learner. In economies of scale, this means a lot because like where my son schools has a population of 1,400 this would mean that a Principal would have to figure out where to get (599.19X1,400) which totals to about 840,000.
The result has been that school heads have to run institutions like personal entities at the risk of their mental well-being due to the immense burdens they have to shoulder. It means that heads have to enter into dangerous gambling-agreements with suppliers for food, fuel, water and other essentials. It is from these funds where teachers have to pay for the school sourced (BOM) teachers, school nurses, security guards, grounds management and repairs/maintenance. This means that contracted personnel have to go for months on end without pay. Other Principals have resulted to shortening school terms by at least a week to manage cost.
It is even further depressing that as schools prepare for end of year national exams, administration of the same will be faced by many challenges since the government has not remitted school capitation. While the two teachers’ unions have spoken over the same for many a days, it is unless all the stakeholders in education come together and ensure that this matter is critically analyzed and resolved once and for all.
We should not until that time when catastrophes occur in education institutions that we start running up and about to put blame on school managers and start charting the way forward. The mistake has already been done and the faster we rise up and correct the mess, the better.
In the meantime, school heads and need to find peace and this can only be achieved if CS Migamba disburses all the remaining capitation funds. Over to you, Mr. CS.
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