The National Assembly’s Education Committee has proposed a Ksh35 billion reallocation in the 2025/26 financial year budget to support key education sector priorities, including national examinations, university scholarships, school infrastructure and teacher recruitment.
Appearing before the Budget and Appropriations Committee on Monday, May 26, 2025, Education Committee Chairperson and Tinderet MP Julius Melly outlined the proposed adjustments, noting that key components of the education system had been left unfunded in the initial budget estimates.
Among the urgent proposals is a Ksh5.9 billion reallocation from the recurrent capitation for secondary (Ksh3 billion), junior secondary (Ksh2 billion), and primary schools (Ksh900 million) to facilitate the administration and invigilation of national examinations.
Melly stressed that this amount is still insufficient, as the full requirement for national examination funding stands at Ksh11 billion, leaving a shortfall of Ksh5.1 billion.
“Examinations are a critical component of our education system. Without proper funding, the credibility and effectiveness of the assessment process are at risk,” Melly told the committee.
Teacher recruitment
The lawmakers are also pushing for an additional Ksh7.3 billion to convert 20,000 intern teachers to permanent and pensionable terms once their current contracts expire later this year.
To curb instructor shortages in technical colleges, the MPs have proposed Ksh1.9 billion to recruit 2,000 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) tutors.
“This will bridge the current TVET instructor gap, which stands at 6,000,” Melly explained.
The ambitious funding request extends to higher education, with the committee seeking a Ksh17 billion allocation to support university scholarships for 208,000 first-year students joining in the upcoming academic cycle.
To complement these measures, MPs have also proposed Ksh3.7 billion for school infrastructure improvement through a matching fund with the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF).
“The Budget and Appropriations Committee is set to deliberate on these proposals, alongside others, as it prepares to finalise its report later this week,” a statement from Parliament dated May 26, 2025, reads in part.
Exam fee waiver scrapped
The push for more funding comes as the government prepares to eliminate the Ksh5 billion national examination fee waiver in 2026.
The waiver, introduced in 2015 under former President Uhuru Kenyatta, was meant to support the country’s 100 per cent school transition policy.
However, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi recently announced that only students classified as needy will benefit from government-sponsored exam registration moving forward.
“We have to review the costs in the sense that we must ask ourselves, why should we pay examination fees for all students? You see, in 2026, Kenya is projected to have approximately 3 million students sitting for their national examinations, around 1.2 million anticipated to sit for KPSEA, and over 960,000 for KCSE,” Mbadi said during a media interview on May 23, 2025.
He argued that expecting taxpayers — some of whom are barely surviving — to pay exam fees for children in elite private schools is unjustifiable.
“If your child is learning in a private school where you pay Ksh300,000, Ksh1 million in a year, honestly, can’t you pay Ksh5,000 for the examination fee for that child? Why should you force, make Kenyans, taxpayers, some of whom can barely make a living, to pay an examination fee for your child?”
