CS Ogamba: How I steadied ship amid classrooms chaos, funding problems

Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba/HANDOUT

When Julius Ogamba took over as Education CS in August last year, he inherited a sector in turmoil. Strikes, school unrest and a struggling Competency-Based Curriculum system had left the sector chaotic.

Classrooms were inadequate for Junior Secondary School (JSS) learners. Adding to the pressure was inadequate resources from the government following the rejection of the Finance Bill, 2024.

“There was fire everywhere,” he says. “It has been crisis after crisis, but somehow, with God’s grace, we have managed to steer through.”

Ogamba explains how he navigated the chaos and worked to stabilise the education sector.

Excerpts:

How would you assess the progress of the CBC rollout and what has been the most significant achievement so far?

When I came in, I found teachers were being retooled and the government had deployed almost 76,000 teachers to cover the shortfall as per an assessment conducted. But, one of the biggest issues was where to domicile JSS, which includes grades 7, 8 and 9.

There was a misconception JSS was only Grade 9.

Junior school was already in primary and the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms found 93 per cent of submissions recommended domiciling JSS in primary schools due to cost, uniform changes and the young age of learners.

However, some felt JSS should move to high schools. The major challenge was determining where to place Grade 9 since we were transitioning from the 8-4-4 system and new classrooms were needed. There was also limited time to construct 16,000 classrooms for Grade 9 before January.

Luckily, the government secured Sh11 billion from the World Bank for 11,000 classrooms and Sh3 billion from the government, matched by another Sh3 billion from CDF to build an additional 5,000 classrooms– totalling 16,000.

The problem now was completing 16,000 classrooms in three months before January’s transition.

To meet the deadline, we decided to devolve the funds directly to schools based on student numbers and classroom needs.

The uniform cost per classroom was Sh1 million to ensure nationwide consistency. This worked and by January, 14,500 classrooms had been completed. By mid-February, all 16,000 classrooms were completed.

What are some of the significant achievements since you took over?

There have been complaints about the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service portal crashing, so we decided to open applications in phases.

We started with TVET institutions, processed those applications, then moved on to KMTCs and TTCs.

Now, we are set to open university applications in the next week. This phased approach has really helped and prevented system failures.

To prevent malpractice in KCSE exams, we digitised the system by personalising exam papers with student photos and index numbers.

Student identities were removed before marking to eliminate bias, with enforcement of a ban on publicising the arrival of exam papers to prevent leaks.

Another thing we did was remove the standardisation of exams. This led to an increase of 46,000 students qualifying for university from 202,000 to 246,000.

In terms of transition from secondary schools, we have registered more than 700,000 students in TVETs up from 450,000 and my target is to reach two million. This was done with the support of NGAOs.

The education sector was also facing strikes, including those by Knut, Kuppet, the university staff union and even student protests over funding.

We started negotiations and successfully resolved the disputes. At Moi University where students had been stuck for nine to 12 years due to administrative issues, intervention led to a resolution.

Students graduated on November 28 last year and there is another graduation on March 28. Similarly, the Technical University of Kenya was reopened after staff disputes were addressed.

On university funding, a court ruling nullified the model for first and second-year students. However, the government started reviewing the model in September 2023 through a presidential committee.

The legal basis for the nullification remains questionable, as it was argued there was no public participation in the process.

We are addressing this matter and we are confident before September when students start reporting, it will be working.

There are frequent delays with the disbursement of capitation, what measures are you putting in place to address it?

We have agreed with the Treasury that going forward we would put in the application much earlier.

What I am also looking at and hoping is to reach a level we are able to ringfence the budget for the Ministry of Education so funds are available when required.

You recently ordered schools to release withheld certificates, what prompted this decision?

The Kenya National Examinations Council Act, 2012, section 10 (1b) says nobody should hold a certificate belonging to a child for any reason.

But, there are teachers who have been holding certificates belonging to students for 10 years. Even if they owed money, this idea of holding certificates for 10 years begs the question- ‘what fees is it going to give you?’ You need to look for another method of getting money.

I know it is an unpopular decision, but when it is in the interest of the public, you should not be afraid to make hard and right decisions.

During vetting, you were told about cartels in the ministry, how have you dealt with them?

I have not encountered these cartels and no one has stopped me from doing my work. You know, the education sector has the highest number of organised groups who want their voices to be heard.

We need to get a way of listening to all and understand where are they coming from.