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The Government has set up a new audit body to crack down on corruption in schools. The body to be known as Directorate of School Audit (DSA) will be tasked with scrutinising the use of the billions of shillings sent to schools. According to the Education Principal Secretary, DSA will examine books of accounts to identify the expenditure leakages and report back to the ministry. School heads found to have presided over theft or misuse of the money will be forced to bear the responsibility.

Education Cabinet Secretary has described the auditing system used in Kenyan schools as a “big joke” and a great let-down and accused auditors of colluding with headteachers to give favourable reports even when money has been lost. He also decried the inappropriate use of free learning cash and the distribution of government-purchased books in schools and described the system of assessing the performance of teachers as still substandard.

The President has ordered an audit of how public primary and secondary schools have spent the billions in free learning cash released to them across three years. Free Primary Education funds were first rolled out in 2003, with each child getting Sh1,020 per year. In 2014, the Jubilee government increased FPE to Sh1,420 to cater for an estimated enrolment of about 10 million children in about 23,000 public primary schools. Annually this costs Sh14 billion.

Nationwide school audits were this year expected to cover over 80 percent of the 8 179 schools in the country, of which 5 805 are primary schools, while 2 374 are secondary schools. While the exercise has so far been producing results and unearthing massive irregularities and abuse of funds at Government school institutions, there are reports that schools are being asked to fund the exercise.