New Nemis to block school heads from manipulating enrolment data

Heads of public primary and secondary schools will no longer change enrolment data in their institutions to get higher capitation allocation, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has said.

While unveiling an improved version of the National Education Management System (Nemis), Prof Magoha said the new system would allow parents to monitor their children’s learning progress.

Magoha said the upgraded system would ease data retrieval for timely decision-making and guarantee data reliability for all stakeholders.

“The system provides accurate data and is more attuned to Ministry of Education end-users. It will consolidate and improve the capabilities the system has had over the years the ministry has been using it to make decisions,” Magoha said.

This means that schools will no longer have ghost learners as the new system will clean up students data in public institutions.

In 2019, while addressing a Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (Kessha) conference in Mombasa, Paul Kibet, director of secondary and tertiary education, said many schools missed out on government funds.

He cited head teachers’ inability to use the system meant to help manage public institutions.

This caused a crisis in schools as heads failed to use Nemis to provide details of students, which, among other things, determines how much each school should get.

“Many schools have received less funds because details of students were not captured in the system to allow for release of capitation grants,” said Kibet.

Kessha chairman Kahi Indimuli said that no money had been disbursed to school accounts by the government through Education ministry, terming it a Nemis error.

“Nemis wrongly uploaded data prematurely since the ministry was not done with the process of disbursement,” said Indimuli. 

He said the Principal Secretary for Basic Education had not signed the disbursement hence no funds had been disbursed or reversed.

State Department for Implementation of Curriculum Reforms Principal Secretary Fatuma Chege confirmed to Members of Parliament that Nemis needed to be upgraded.

“I found issues being raised about Nemis when I joined the ministry. We need a new database for our function of monitoring and evaluating learners across the entire education system,” said Chege.

Magoha assured users of inclusivity and data safety, adding that the system would ensure more direct access to data through the implementation of a decentralised approach to data accessibility.

Magoha said that parents will also be able to monitor their children’s performance remotely from the comfort of their living room or office.

He said Nemis would ease the transfer of learners from one institution to another.