CS Amina makes U-turn, allows principals to admit students

In what appears to be a dramatic U-turn by the Ministry of Education on an earlier directive, secondary school principals can now admit Form One students to their schools.

An earlier order from the ministry had barred principals from admitting Form One students, saying they did not have the power to do so.

On Saturday, Education Principal Secretary Dr Belio Kipsang backtracked on the previous order, saying principals are now at liberty to admit Form One students as long as they capture their details in the National Education Management Information System (Nemis) upon reporting to school.

All candidates who sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination in 2018 are expected to report to various national, extra- county, county and sub-county schools countrywide between tomorrow and Friday next week.

Dr Kipsang asked principals who may have issued letters to parents to standardise the process by uploading the students’ details onto the online system quickly so that they could be validated and approved.

Genuine transfer cases will be considered before the end of the Form One reporting period, Dr Kipsang assured parents and guardians.

The ministry says capturing the students’ details in the system will ease retrieval of data of learners whenever they visit health facilities under the National Hospital Insurance Fund scheme. The government rolled out a medical cover for all secondary school students in 2018.

Through information captured in Nemis, the ministry hopes to track reporting and enrolment of students in schools under the 100 per cent transition rate.

Additionally, the ministry will use this data as the reference point to determine the number of students in every school, which will then facilitate accurate disbursement of the Free Day Secondary Education Programme funds.

This system will also make it easier to track students who wish to transfer to other schools, and for the ministry to manage students’ details to avoid manipulation even when they exit the school system.

During the Form One selection in December 2018, the ministry had instructed school principals to receive details of candidates who wished to join their schools as opposed to those they had been selected to.

The principals had also been asked to upload details of such requests onto the Nemis system for validation and approval by the ministry.

So far, the ministry has successfully approved 26,000 requests for transfers based on data captured on Nemis.

Over the years, principals in leading public schools have been cashing in on their power to admit students, by asking parents to part with money to have their children issued with admission letters. This often locked out students who merited places in such schools as corruption thrived.

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