TI exposes more rot in education

By Juma Kwayera

The verdict on corruption in education sector is out: 8.6 million primary school children denied access to quality education will join the ranks of the country’s ‘Lost Generation’.

The latest Transparency International research findings on education point to pervasive rot. Kenya only caught public attention after the British Department for International Development (DfID) busted massive looting in the Ministry of Education.

"The study reveals that the Ministry of Education has consistently under-spent its allocations for development expenditure despite a steady increase in budgetary allocations over the years," TI says.

The report says the cause of the inverse relationship between increased budgetary allocation and diminished spending per pupil is corruption, which since 2003 — when the Free Primary Education programme kicked off — has created multiple millionaires in the ministry.

In the 2005/6 financial year, the ministry under-spent by 33.8 per cent, which amounts to Sh3.29 billion out of the Sh9.7 billion the programme received from the Government and donors, who include Unesco.

Elementary education

The programme saw Kenya register one of the highest elementary education enrolments in the world, with its hallmark being 86-year old Kimani Maruge, who died last year.

At international level, the country was poised to achieve the third pillar of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere would complete a full course of primary schooling.

Experts say the genesis of the rot education system is budget tracking – whether the funds are externally or internally sourced. They say the failure to make private business and public service mutually exclusive breeds corruption through public procurement.

"A budget is an expression of intent and choices. As a set of values that is also a statement of intent. It is also a policy statement, which if formulated, interpreted, and implemented transparently curbs wastage and guarantees outcomes. Both the intent and direction must be pro-poor," says the United Nations Millennium Development Deputy Director for Africa Charles Abugre.

In Kenya’s case, he says, education budget, just as in other sectors, is drawn in total secrecy, implemented opaquely that makes it impossible to measure its effectiveness. Budgetary distortions, he says, occur though clogged public procurement procedures. As a consequence of the massive corruption, Britain is withholding Sh1.2 billion grant. The US has also suspended Sh500 million education funding programme, citing entrenched pilferage. In the past, donors have tended to take the cue from the two, who are Kenya’s leading trading partners.

Britain says the failure by the ministries of Finance and Education to account for Sh103million, budgeted for constructing new classrooms and buying textbooks informed her decision.

But TI tracking of the education budgets since 2003 reveals unprecedented impunity with fewer and fewer consumers accessing education. Fingers are pointing at officers in the two ministries, mandated to handle free primary education grants.

Irregular payment

The TI report, Kenya Education Sector Integrity Study, says: "Irregular payments to contractors with disregard to Government procurement regulations have been rampant. The Government’s typical response to this problem has been the establishment of taskforces to vet pending bills."

The study says the Sh103 million misappropriated by ministry officials will cost Sh1,020 a child and more than 100,000 pupils from poor backgrounds who would have benefited from the programme may not go to school.

"Furthermore, the freeze by the UK may also affect 8.6 million children in the free primary education programme." The report raises the question: "How did corruption rise in Kenya in the midst of laws and institutions to fight it?"

The answer lies in Abugre’s observation on Kenya’s political and socio-economic strata: "Kenya’s scares me. There is no distinction between politics and human life. When the values in the budget are wrong budgets, the procedures are easy to bend."

It is even more complicated because public servants are allowed to dabble in private business.

"They are suppliers who fiddle with figures to steal resources that would have gone into improvement of social services," he says.

"The scandal in education reflects lack of morality. If every leader has corruption in his closet, he does not fight corruption."

Abugre, who arrived in Kenya last November when the education funds scandal had exploded, says it is unfortunate that the minister and permanent secretary at the centre of the scandal are taking responsibility to the scandal.