Principals Expose Tactics Parents Use in KCPE, KCSE Registration Costing Students
Kahi Indimuli, the chairman of the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA), revealed on Tuesday, May 10, how using phony birth certificates to register for national exams prevents pupils from receiving government support.
In an interview with Citizen TV, Indimuli said that because the government lacked a way to validate the credentials, many pupils were signing up for the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) using random numbers.
He explained that as a result, the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) will not accept fraudulent certificates, making it impossible for the affected pupils to register.
The principal further clarified that the NEMIS was used by the government to distribute school funding.
“Any number can be used to register for KCPE, and the student will still be registered. The system rejects them when they bring those certificates to secondary school where we need to use them.
“You find that you have 500 students in Form One but in the end, only 400 have authentic papers,” he said.
He continued by saying that many principals were obliged to ask parents for financial support because government financing for education could not keep up with the demand in the classrooms.
He claimed that as a result, principals were pushing for a manual method in which every kid enrolling in secondary would be taken into consideration when capitation was distributed.
“If the birth certificates are ineffective, we must look for a different method of enlisting the students. The government can use the manual input to confirm the figures we actually have in the classroom, he said.
Nevertheless, he bemoaned the delays in the distributions, noting that the majority of the funds were distributed a month into a new term.
The new term’s activities, which include music festivals and school competitions, the principal of Machakos High School noted, will necessitate enough funding.
Under the leadership of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, NEMIS was introduced in 2017 with the goal of assisting the government in keeping track of pupils’ academic progress. The distribution of school textbooks benefited from the distinctive identification as well.
The KCSE is scheduled to start on October 10 and end on November 24.
Principals Expose Tactics Parents Use in KCPE, KCSE Registration Costing Students
