The National Assembly committee on education has proposed increased capitation to primary school learners.
According to the Education Committee, the current capitation is not sensitive to the prevailing economic circumstances.
“There are persistent capitation deficits across the entire sector,” recommended the committee chaired by Busia Women Representative Florence Mutua.
The Budget and Appropriations Committee wants to give schools extra cash through the Free Primary Education programme.
This is after headteachers have been complaining that Sh1,420 given per learner was not enough.
The MPs urged the Ministry of Education to engage stakeholders within two months and “spearhead the review of capitation amount provided for public primary school learners and realign it to support the implementation of the new curriculum without compromising the quality education”.
The budget committee also proposed the establishment of a multi-agency panel that will come up with a strategy on rolling out the Digital Learning Programme.
The team will be spearheaded by the Ministry of ICT and Innovation, with representatives from the ministries of Energy, Interior and Education.
Each year, the Government allocates Sh1,420 to each pupil, and over the years, authorities have relied on enrolment figures presented by head teachers to work out subsidy wired to 23,000 primary schools.
There have been suspicions of inflation of enrolment figures but which has been hard to prove given the manual documentation.
Head teachers have cited lack of birth certificates, which is mandatory to list a pupil in the National Education Information Management System (Nemis), among the reasons for those who have not registered.
But authorities have questioned whether that alone is the reason for the huge discrepancy and some officials have pointed it is unlikely that the 5 million missing pupils can be accounted for once data for the months of June to August 1 is aggregated.
The one-month window was facilitated under a rapid results initiative in conjunction with the Interior ministry which oversees issuance of birth certificates.