Kisii Education Executive Amos Andama (left),with Kisii School principal Morris Ogutu
The government’s textbook supply project started last year to improve the quality of teaching and learning has been hit by a major racket in what is believed to be a scheme to fleece money but in way that seems not to be corruption.
The Education ministry, which is managing the project, is said to have saturated schools with excess books in a scheme that appears aimed at profiteering suppliers.
Investigations by the Nation reveal that some schools have been supplied with nearly double the number of textbooks they need, in virtually all subjects.
The textbook supply policy replaced an equally corruption-prone system where schools bought books from booksellers and publishers based on recommendations of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), contained in what was known as the Orange Book.
Last year, the government decided it would procure books directly from publishers and supply schools, with the aim of making savings from discounts on account of bulk purchases.
The government announced that the new system would save taxpayers large sums of money.
The cost of textbooks for secondary schools would drop from Sh21 billion to Sh7.5 billion a year, it said.
However, the project seems to have opened a route for corruption and deal-making. Books are bought in unnecessarily large quantities to allow for profiteering and kickbacks, at the expense of the taxpayer.
According to a Nation survey, a number of schools have an oversupply of textbooks and are even struggling to store them.
One school received 4,135 books instead of the 2,781 it needed to give each student a copy of all the recommended books.
The greatest beneficiaries of the industry that runs into billions of shillings appear to be publishers, who since 2017 have been contracted to supply books directly to schools after the exercise was taken away from headteachers over allegations of corruption.
In addition to the government’s allocation of Sh7.5 billion for textbooks, donors have pumped in close to Sh13 billion, mostly for primary education.
There is a Sh5 billion Tusome Project that seeks to improve learning outcomes for classes One and Two in Kiswahili and English.
There is also an Sh8.8 billion programme funded by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) under the supervision of the World Bank.
The Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (Kessha) has proposed that the distribution exercise be suspended for four years in order to allow schools to utilise the available books.
Already the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is probing allegations of irregularities in procurement of textbooks for State-sponsored schools under the Free Primary Education Fund, estimated at Sh10 billion.
“Schools have already achieved the 1:1 ratio per subject and do not need textbooks for the next four years, which is the shelf life of a book,” Kessha chairman Kahi Indimuli said in a proposal to the Ministry of Education.
He said the government has shifted buying of Kiswahili and English set books and mathematical tables from parents to schools without any additional funding, a further drain on the already constrained vote.