Thousands of schools could face difficulties accessing their full government capitation after the Ministry of Education discovered that more than two million primary school learners are missing from its national digital registration system, raising fresh concerns about the accuracy of records used to distribute public resources.
The Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS) has captured just over five million pupils in public and private primary schools, against an estimated population of 7.2 million, leaving a shortfall of approximately 2.15 million learners.
Director of Education in charge of KEMIS, Fredrick Mujumba, presented the figures during the 2026 Kenya Comprehensive School Heads Association (KCSHA) annual conference in Mombasa, where he disclosed that the registration exercise had also exposed schools listed in the system without a single learner recorded.
Mujumba said the ministry had successfully brought learning institutions onto the platform through an institution registration exercise, but the subsequent review revealed that having a school listed did not necessarily mean its learners had been registered.
“We did an institution registry, and all institutions were allowed on board. One thing we have noticed is that we have institutions on the system that have zero learners. We didn't expect that, but it's something that we are working on to establish,” he said.
The registration figures showed that primary schools had captured 2,615,822 boys and 2,442,600 girls, translating to a combined total of 5,058,422 learners. This is considerably below the ministry's expected enrolment of 7.2 million.
The situation was different in senior schools, where 1,644,077 boys and 1,615,829 girls had been registered, bringing the total to 3,259,906 against a projected 3.5 million.
Junior schools had recorded 1,637,561 boys and 1,546,334 girls, representing approximately 3.18 million learners.
Mujumba said the registration exercise had revealed a much wider discrepancy at the primary school level compared to the other two categories, making it a priority area for the ministry as it works to improve education records.
He pointed out that the growing importance of data in the sector meant that the government needed reliable information to guide decisions and support ongoing reforms.
“Data is becoming a key thing in terms of what we use to deliver education. As we go through the reforms, you notice that data now is becoming a very key thing,” he said.
The director observed that while the education sector continued to generate substantial amounts of information, its usefulness remained limited because the systems needed to process and apply the data were still being developed.
He said strengthening the available databases would enable the ministry to make better decisions and improve the way education services were delivered.
As part of these efforts, Mujumba revealed that the ministry was developing a learner registry and planned to establish a separate human resource registry, together with other databases, to improve the management and planning of the education sector.
Schools face capitation warning
The enrolment shortfall has also triggered a warning to school administrators, with the ministry maintaining that it will not release government funding for learners whose details are absent from KEMIS.
The Head of the Directorate of Field Coordination and Co-curricular Activities, Nelson Sifuna, told school heads that failure to register all pupils would have direct financial consequences for their institutions.
“Colleagues, two million of our children have not been captured on Kemis. That means you will not be funded. Kindly, we have employed even ICT officers at your service,” he said.
Sifuna challenged the more than 15,000 administrators attending the conference at Sheikh Zayed Children Welfare Centre in Bombolulu, Nyali subcounty, to take advantage of the ICT support provided by the ministry and ensure no learner was left out of the database.
He acknowledged that school administrators had raised concerns about receiving less than their expected capitation, noting that the ministry understood the financial pressures schools faced in running their operations.
However, he insisted that KEMIS would remain the sole reference point for determining the amount of funding allocated to each institution, warning against reliance on enrolment figures that could not be verified.
“We are concerned when we receive complaints from schools that they have not received 100 per cent of their capitation. We understand the challenges you face in running schools, but unless learners’ names are captured in Kemis, there is no other system we will use to allocate funding. Ultimately, we do not want a situation where learners are declared to be ghost pupils,” he said.
The government began moving from the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) to KEMIS in 2024, seeking to establish a more reliable way of collecting and managing information across learning institutions.
The digital platform is expected to maintain accurate learner records, monitor pupils as they progress through different stages of education and provide a basis for distributing resources.
These include government capitation, teachers, textbooks and other materials required by schools.
Meanwhile, the ministry has relaxed some of the documentation requirements that had previously slowed down the registration of learners.
The Head of the Directorate of Primary Education, Stephen Barongo, disclosed that pupils no longer need to present birth certificates before their information can be entered into the KEMIS database.
He said the ministry had initially made birth certificates a compulsory requirement but later reconsidered the decision after establishing that many children attending school did not possess the document.
The change was intended to remove the registration barrier and enable schools to capture more learners in the government database.