The government saved Sh912 million in capitation payments to would-be ghost students in public primary and secondary schools during the third term of 2025.
The payments were avoided after a nationwide forensic audit, launched on September 1, 2025, by the Ministry of Education, uncovered a scheme in which some school heads and principals had inflated enrolments on the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS).
The ministry allocates capitation for free primary, junior, secondary, and special needs education strictly based on learner numbers recorded in NEMIS.
Speaking while releasing the audit report on Thursday evening, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba said the audit found discrepancies between NEMIS data and the enrolment figures submitted by school heads.
The majority of unauthenticated learner records were in public primary schools, where NEMIS showed 5,833,175 learners, but the verification exercise found only 4,947,271.
This meant the government had been paying capitation for 885,904 non-existent pupils.
The audit also identified 87,730 inflated enrolments in secondary schools, bringing the total number of ghost learners to 973,634.
“The total amount spent and we were able to retain because of this verification exercise amounted to Sh912 million, and this is inclusive across the board,” Ogamba said at the ministry headquarters, Jogoo House, Nairobi.
The withheld funds include allocations for 10 secondary and 17 primary schools that were non-operational due to insecurity, lack of learners, community relocation, or administrative closure.
These schools had not been reported to the ministry and continued to appear in NEMIS.
Ogamba attributed the discrepancies to school administrators and subcounty directors of education. He said inaccurate data entry and weak oversight arose from failure to correct or report inconsistencies promptly.
