The Ministry of Education (MoE) has revealed plans to replace the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) with a new system compatible with the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
In 2017, the ministry of education introduced NEMIS which has been in use for capturing crucial Biodata for students including learners’ names, Birth Certificate details, disabilities (if any), parent’s contacts and names among others.
The same system (NEMIS) is used by the ministry of education when allocating money to public schools to cover tuition and other expenses as provided in the guidelines provided by the government.
Ministry of Education has revealed plans to do away with the current system because it is not compatible with the requirements of the Competency-based Curriculum (CBC).
It is through NEMIS that the Ministry of Education is able to know schools’ enrolment which in turn helps in the termly fee disbursement in schools across the country.
The State Department for Implementation of Curriculum Reform PS Fatuma CHEGE has revealed that the current NEMIS system does not help in linking data with the new system of education.
On this note, Chege has said that the government shall spend millions on building a fresh data system to capture accurate data for learners and educational institutions under the Competency-Based Curriculum. However, Chege did not reveal how much the new system will cost.
“I found issues being raised about NEMIS when I joined the Ministry. We need a new database for our function of monitoring and evaluating learners across the entire system of education,” said Chege.
The NEMIS provided UPI numbers are different from the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) provided assessment numbers to monitor learners under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) hence need for a new compatible system with the CBC.
According to Chege, schools now need a new system that will be used in monitoring learners academically from time to time from the time they join school in pre primary to university level.
However, this is not possible with the NEMIS system.
Chege further revealed that her office is dealing with inadequate funding among other six challenges namely emergent policy concerns which necessitate the strengthening of collaborations with stakeholders, inadequate staffing, weak technical capacities for monitoring and evaluation of curriculum reforms among education management staff and general misinformation about reforms on the curriculum and uncoordinated data sources.
Additionally, Kezzia Wandera, the Deputy Director of Quality Assurance and Standards, said that NEMIS only aligns itself to primary and secondary education and does not take care of pre-primary, tertiary and university education.
“We would want a one-stop-shop of data from pre-primary-all the way to tertiary and universities,” said Wandera.
The Competency-Based task force report recommended each learner be given a tracking number at Grade 3 after sitting for his or her school-based assessment (SBA) to monitor the learners’ progress as they move to the next levels of education.
