Governors defend record on ECDE management amid criticism

Council of Governors Education Committee chairperson and Baringo Governor Erick Mutai defends counties during the Senate during its Assessment and Planning Retreat in Naivasha, February 27, 2026.

Governors have pushed back against criticism over the management of Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE), attributing the challenges to inadequate resource allocation.

Under the constitution, county governments are responsible for pre-primary education and childcare facilities, school feeding programmes, infrastructure development and the recruitment of ECDE teachers.

However, the devolved units were on Friday criticised for falling short of these obligations, particularly in the provision of infrastructure.

“Regrettably, pre-primary learning in some counties in this country is still being held under trees and dilapidated structures. I urge this House to exercise its oversight mandate to ensure county integrated development plans prioritise the construction of child-friendly, safe and modern ECDE centres around the country,” Basic Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok told the Senate during its Assessment and Planning Retreat in Naivasha.

He also faulted counties for what he described as neglect of the school feeding programme and the welfare of ECDE teachers, who provide foundational education to about four million learners.

“The current state of our ECDE teachers is unacceptable. In many counties, there's delayed salaries, lack of pension schemes and a take-it-or-leave-it volunteer mentality towards these professionals across the country,” he said.

The PS urged the Senate to strengthen its oversight of county governments in the management of ECDEs, warning that “an unhappy teacher cannot be trusted with nurturing a child's mind”.

In response, Council of Governors Education Committee chairperson and Baringo Governor Erick Mutai defended the counties, arguing that the ECDE function was never costed at the time of the promulgation of the 2010 constitution.

“No attendant resources were provided for this function from day one. The function was given to counties and there was no costing for the same,” he told senators during the session chaired by Prof Margaret Kamar.

Mutai said counties have been striving to meet expectations using sharable revenue and own-source revenue, including investing in new classrooms across the country.

“Children were learning under trees,” he said, “but today we reflect with joy that we have an increased access as of 2025 of 3.8 per cent increase in pre-primary enrolment rising to 2,953,207.”

He said this growth is backed by a 2.5 per cent increase in the number of schools, bringing the total to 48,721 ECDE classrooms nationwide, with more than 5,950 classrooms constructed in 2025 alone.

On teacher recruitment, Mutai said counties have built a tutor workforce from scratch, hiring more than 50,104 pre-primary teachers since the function was devolved.

“When devolution happened, most of those ECDE teachers were not recognised anywhere, most of them were not trained and there were no functional system in both the software, which are the teachers and the physical infrastructure.”

He said counties supply additional learning materials, including textbooks, tables and chairs and continue to run feeding programmes.

Working with development partners, he noted, counties have developed a school feeding policy aimed at rolling out a unified nutritious meals programme for ECDE learners across all 47 counties.

The ministry had raised alarm on this aspect, warning that some schools had no feeding programmes or were feeding learners unstandardised meals.

On Vocational Training Colleges (VTCs), Mutai said counties have prioritised establishing sufficient training centres to support continuous professional development for ECDE educators.

“You will see attempts by the county governments to allocate resources in terms of capitation to these particular VTCs. However, this function was not costed,” he emphasised, pointing to the financial burden counties are shouldering.

According to Mutai, the national government previously provided a Sh5 billion conditional grant to support VTCs, but the funding was withdrawn around 2018.

“So VTCs have been left to struggle under the little resources that the governors have within their disposal.”

Senate Standing Committee on Education chairperson Betty Montet said the committee has visited nine counties and met 29 governors over the past eight months to assess ECDE implementation and its findings are concerning.

“The matter on ECDE on the ground has not been very rosy. It has been very very unfortunate, very discouraging,” she said, but added that “governors are waking up to do better”.

“Things are changing and we are hoping that in the next six months, things will be different.”