Lead image for Think long-term in funding public education.
Over the past three years, the mood around education has shifted significantly, thanks to the issue of funding. In 2023, a taskforce — the Presidential Working Party on Education Reforms — was formed to come up with recommendations on a financing model that would sustainably support university education in Kenya.
The result of this exercise was a student-centered financing structure, which categorised them into five tiers based on their family income, and allocated varying amounts of scholarships and loans as per those bands.
However, this has eventually proved to be unsustainable, both for families, which cannot afford the high amounts of money which they are asked to pay as fees, and for the government, on what it should give Helb to provide all students with loans (its current budget deficit stands at Sh56 billion), and the Universities Fund with a shortfall of Sh28 billion.
The government plan to drop this model raises questions about how we can approach education financing if Kenya is to subsidise the sector. The problem we should be confronting now is how to fund higher education sustainably for future generations.
A look at the current budget shows that out of the total Sh4.8 trillion only Sh3.6 trillion comes from revenue collected. The other amount, a deficit of Sh1.15 trillion is from loans.
A breakdown of the budget shows that outside the debt repayment (which stands at Sh2.3 trillion), the education sector receives the highest (ministerial) allocation, standing at Sh784.5 billion.
This amount is divided among TSC for payment of teachers’ and interns’ salaries, basic education (capitation for primary and secondary schools and tertiary institutions (loans, scholarships, infra projects and research).
However, the amount we consider to be generous still contains huge deficits.