Kenya’s education sector is at a crossroads in the wake of government decision to remove budget allocations to state examinations agency, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), that was already running on a shoestring budget. This is after the ministry of education shut down its main source of revenue – primary and secondary school examination levies.

Education budget reductions immediately elicited sharp criticism from stakeholders, who now propose KNEC be made semi-autonomous like the legislature and judiciary to raise quality assurance and purge the knowledge industry of incorrigibility, according to Emuhaya MP Omboko Milemba, who sits on the parliamentary education in the National Assembly. Milemba is also chairman of the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET).

Even more burdensome to KNEC is how the levies for tertiary institutions such as colleges, technical institutes and polytechnics are channelled through the e-citizen – state-controlled portal. The portal is currently a subject of heavy criticism over its ownership and management, which critics complain delays or misroutes funds for critical functions like examinations. The portal has in the recent past come up for censure by Auditor General over unexplained movement of funds in its custody.

Hours before he left the ministry after President William Ruto sacked his entire cabinet on July 11, former Cabinet Secretary for Education Ezekiel Machogu had allayed fears that the ministry was in a financial crisis. But an education justice champion Emmanuel Manyasa, explained how the muddling of the budget provides a peek into how the deep-seated inefficiency in the ministry and that the examinations body requires urgent attention devoid politics to restore national tests’ credibility.

In Kenya, Manyasa says, education has been turned into a political function and decisions are made whimsically to the detriment of a system society has bequeathed the “sacred” role of human resource development.

The latest row in education sector was touched off by a decision by the Ministry of National Treasury and Planning to recommended steep cuts in KNEC budget for examination administration, supervision and invigilation that are traditionally carried by teachers and regional education officers with the help of police who provide security and safety.

While Prof Machogu concurred that the revised budget by the Ministry of Treasury and National Planning was a serious mistake that ought not to have been made, he attributed the purge to pressure on the executive to appease the youth who on June 28 staged nationwide protests over taxation, unemployment and other lofty economic promises are never met by President William Ruto.

The reductions came barely months after KNEC settled claims by examiners, invigilators, police and other administrators that had been pending for years following earlier cuts. As a result of the shoestring budget Manyasa says KNEC function optimally.

Manyasa, who is the director Usawa civil society that advocates for universal access to education, points out that strikes and boycotts by examiners are a common feature during examinations period because of  reduced revenue.

“In the past 10 or so years, the government abolished exam fees. But the government itself has not been releasing funds to KNEC – the money budgeted for exams. KNEC has been in doldrums that last year they did something that was unprecedented, which was to ask secondary school teachers – as part of their work to invigilate national examinations. That had never been done in the history of education because they (KNEC) did not want subject teachers – some with masters degrees – to invigilate. It was feared that teachers with integrity issues would be paid by the schools where they had gone to invigilate to help the candidates sitting the exams,”  explains Manyasa, who teaches economics at Kenyatta University.

Before he left office, Machogu said he shared fears that the drastic cuts in examinations budget would compromise the quality of the examinations and education outcomes. Consequently, he said, the ministry had reached out to treasury to reinstate the budget for exam administration, invigilation and security.

“We are reinstating that. That was a mistake. You know exams must be done. So that one is being reinstated. It was a serious omission by treasury. We have already informed national treasury and we are in agreement that it was a serious omission,” the minister said.

After data of revised government budget was made public, stakeholders expressed concerns that a critical human resource development mechanism had been given a short shrift, with emphasis given to non-essential services like the comfort of government functionaries, foreign travel and retreats cast as team-building.

The irony of budgets for education is that over the past 10 years, top government officials have been hiring helicopters during primary and secondary schools examinations period to ‘coordinate’ the exercise. Their comfort contrasts sharply with the hardships teachers and other examination officials endure because of reduced funding. In banditry-prone regions, for instance, examination officers have been killed for lack of security while on duty.

According to Milemba, after the dumping of the Finance Bill 2024, the austerity measures the government took should never have been too drastic as to affect teachers and students.

“Examinations council’s budget is a budget that we actually struggled for when I was still working with Wilson Sossion (former Kenya National of Union of Teachers secretary-general) to persuade the government to pay for the exams because education is a constitution right. So how do you pay for learning and not exams? By extension how do you withdraw funds for administration and invigilation that provide the most quantifiable feedback on the curriculum and syllabus? It means you are not completing the task (of human resource and skills development),” the legislator argues.

Contacted, Sossion gave the subject a wide berth.

Other stakeholders and experts in the sector now aver that the stripping of the ministry of education examination administration budget highlights the “weirdness” and contemptuousness” in Kenya’s governance and skills structure set-up, with resource development given a short shrift in comparison with non-essentials like foreign travels and non-constitutional offices that had their budgets sliced by 20 per cent.

Educationist Ruth Oniang’o wondered, “So what will happen when these services are not covered? We are dealing with weird people!” Prof Oniang’o describes the cuts as weird and contemptuous.

KNEC is the only body mandated by law to set, administer and evaluate attainment in primary, secondary and tertiary education. It was in 2023-24 financial year allocated Ksh5 billion for administration of primary and secondary school students.

The funds cover administration of the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations. In the 2024-25, fiscal year, the allocation was expected to rise significantly in tandem with the implementation of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), which is still in early stages of execution.

Other than syllabus evaluation, KNEC uses the Ksh5 billion to hire police for security, logistics, monitoring, invigilation, marking and moderation, which the revised the budget dispended with. However, the austerity measures announced by President Ruto cut KNEC’s examination administration and invigilation by 100 per cent, touching off an uproar, which Milemba describes as a “serious deprivation of a basic human right by treasury.”

The irony in Ruto’s priorities follows a desperate attempt to calm the country following a ‘generational tempest’ touched off by Kenyan youth protesting punitive taxation that contained in the Finance Bill 2024, that has since been set aside by the government and austerity measures adopt keep the government afloat.

The worst hit by the revised budget proposals was the KNEC, which the colonial period is credited with skills measurement that can be replicated elsewhere in the world. Stakeholders in education sector now want KNEC to be granted autonomy to manage its budget with minimal oversight by the state.

During the interview, Milemba highlighted how education and human resource development in Kenya is continually relegated to the lower deck of priority spending by the executive in preference to politics. Milemba wants KNEC to be accorded semi-autonomy similar to that granted to constitutional commissions to ensure the quality of national examinations is compromised.

Schools and colleges that take examinations administered by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) face crunch time following a decision by the government to reduce or do away with …payment to examiners.

In a circular released by the Ministry of education after the government revised downward ministry budgets as part of austerity measures announced by President Ruto following nationwide protests over punitive taxes that were contained the now-defunct Finance Bill 2024.

• A Tell report