Parents To Apply for Bursaries, Scholarships Through Upgraded Nemis System
When the revamped National Educational Management Information System (Nemis) becomes operational, parents will be able to initiate the transfer of their children from one school to another online.
Parents will also have real-time access to information about their children’s performance in summative assessments that are integrated with the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) system.
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha revealed yesterday that the system had been re-engineered to be more user-friendly and to provide “one central source of truth when it comes to education data.”
Furthermore, applications for bursaries and scholarships will now be submitted through the website.
Prof Magoha stated that some of the loopholes that allowed dishonest officials and school heads to steal money from the government have been closed.
He was speaking at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development when he unveiled the redesigned Nemis (KICD).
In order for the government to benefit from data, it must be fresh, reliable, and verifiable according to Magoha.
The redesigned Nemis will be tested beginning next Monday and will run until the end of the 2022 academic year in November.
Following a review of the pilot phase, capacity building of Ministry of Education staff, headteachers, and principals will take place.
The system is also linked to those of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), KICD, and the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
Nemis was introduced in 2017 as a web-based data management tool for providing up-to-date educational information.
Learner attendance, a key component of the competency-based curriculum (CBC), will be available on the Nemis to help teachers manage this educational process.
Parents will also be able to view the process and track their child’s attendance.
The CS stated that Nemis has been undergoing renovations for the past three years.
The procedure entailed cleaning up existing data to create what he referred to as ‘virgin data.’
He revealed in 2020 that corrupt school leaders collude with ministry officials to inflate student enrollment in order to steal funds.
He estimated the number of ‘ghost’ learners at the time to be around 530,000.
The anomaly was discovered by a task force on CBC implementation that gathered data from all learning institutions in the country.
Due diligence revealed an increase in the number of students from 8.47 million to nine million.
The loss of 529,997 learners has resulted in annual savings of Sh752,594,740,“ Prof Magoha said at the time.
An audit of ministry data also revealed that capitation funds were sent to non-existent schools that were entered into Nemis by corrupt ministry officials.
Nancy Gathungu, the Auditor-General, has also criticized the ministry for a lack of transparency in the system for audit purposes.
"Nemis will be much safer, and no sniffing dogs will be able to enter and do anything strange… "The next government will have no trouble accounting for its money,” Prof Magoha predicted.
He challenged his ministry’s successor to step up the fight against corruption and uphold integrity.
Dr. Julius Jwan the principal secretary for Basic Education said cases of money being sent to ghost schools or learners will end.
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Unlike in the past, the Nemis will also be used to track students in private schools and how they move between educational institutions.
The ministry has purchased and installed more powerful servers to replace the slow ones, particularly during secondary school admissions. In addition, the server infrastructure has been upgraded.
Parents To Apply for Bursaries, Scholarships Through Upgraded Nemis System
