Four years of Kenya's education sector reforms

Hellen Avisa Director Junior School Ministry of Education,during the public launch of the 2026 Junior School Education (JSE) and Senior School Survey (SESS) Reports by Usawa agenda,on August 19th 2026 at KICD, Nairobi.[Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

The transition of education from the 8-4-4 system to the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), exposed long outstanding challenges.

Teacher shortages remained a persistent concern, universities were struggling with financial pressures, and questions over the sustainability of education financing continued to dominate public debate.

Four years on, the education landscape has been marked by increased public spending, large-scale teacher recruitment, expansion of school infrastructure, a new approach to university financing, growth in technical training and an increasingly digital learning environment.

The National Treasury has proposed Sh784.5 billion for the education sector in the 2026/27 financial year, including Sh424.3 billion for the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).

Sh136.6 billion is set aside for basic education, Sh163.9 billion for higher education and Sh58.5 billion for TVET. The allocation represents a substantial increase from the roughly Sh568 billion education budget in 2021/22.

According to the ministry of education, recruitment of teachers has been one of the most visible interventions of the period.

Government figures show that 76,000 teachers were recruited over two years, with a further 24,000 targeted to bring the number recruited during the administration's first years to about 100,000.

President Ruto has described the exercise as the largest teacher recruitment drive since independence.

The recruitment was particularly important as Kenya expanded Junior Secondary School and prepared for the senior-school phase of CBE.

Staffing imbalances remain more pronounced in some regions and schools, meaning that the national recruitment numbers do not necessarily translate into equal teacher availability in every classroom.

The period has also seen attention to teacher progression and remuneration where in July 2025, TSC signed a four-year Collective Bargaining Agreement with teachers’ unions of Kenya National Union of Teachers, Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers and Kenya Union of Special Needs Education Teachers.

The agreement is being implemented in four phases from July 2025 to June 2029, with the first phase covering 2025/26 and the second beginning in July 2026.

The negotiations were significant because teacher unions had pushed for improvements in salaries, allowances and working conditions.

Under the first phase, TSC said the agreement would cost Sh8.4 billion in salaries and allowances, with the Commission reporting salary increases of up to 29.5 per cent for different cadres.

The Ministry of Education reported that 25,000 teachers were promoted, while TSC's current records show continued implementation of teacher promotions and the 2025–2029 CBA.

The transition to CBE has placed enormous pressure on infrastructure, especially Junior Secondary School requiring additional classrooms, laboratories, learning materials and teachers as successive cohorts moved through the new structure.

Government records indicate that more than 23,000 classrooms were constructed, while plans included 1,600 laboratories to strengthen science and STEM learning.

The infrastructure expansion has helped address overcrowding, but the demand remains high, particularly in rapidly growing and underserved communities to ensure that new facilities are properly equipped, maintained and matched with adequate staffing.

Financial stability has increasingly become an issue with the Ministry of Education reported that capitation was disbursed to public basic education institutions before the start of a school term, the first such occurrence in more than a decade.

Timely funding gives school heads greater certainty when planning for food, learning materials, utilities and other operational requirements.

The government's school-support programmes have also targeted vulnerable learners with the Elimu Scholarship Programme under the Kenya Primary Education Equity in Learning programme, supporting 34,000 learners, including refugee children, with fees, school kits, transport and mentorship.

Perhaps the most consequential financial change in higher education has been the shift from the former Differentiated Unit Cost approach to a student-centred funding model.

Under the new system, government support is linked to a student's assessed financial need and is delivered through a combination of scholarships, loans and household contributions. The Universities Fund says the model is intended to move funding away from an institution-centred approach and improve equity in access.

The reform was introduced against a backdrop of severe financial difficulties in public universities. The administration has argued that some institutions had reached a point of insolvency because of accumulated financial pressures.

The new model is intended to improve the relationship between student financing and institutional revenue by ensuring that government support follows the learner.

For students, the model has expanded the role of scholarships and loans, particularly for vulnerable households. For universities, however, the reform is part of a broader financial restructuring rather than a complete solution to every institutional debt and liquidity problem.

The number of students accessing tertiary education has also grown where the 2025 placement cycle, KUCCPS reported 986,137 available places against 965,501 candidates from the 2024 KCSE cohort.

Of the 244,563 candidates who qualified for degree programmes, 194,372—about 80 per cent—had been placed at various levels by July 2025.

The country's primary-to-secondary transition rate stood at 78.6 per cent in 2022, according to the National Education Sector Strategic Plan, with the government subsequently setting a target of 100 per cent transition.

At the secondary-to-tertiary level, the challenge has historically been greater. A 2023 government publication cited a transition rate of about 30 per cent to post-secondary education in previous years, illustrating the large number of young people leaving the formal education pipeline after secondary school.

TVET has consequently become a central component of the government's skills agenda. Public TVET enrolment reached 565,842 in 2024/25, with the Ministry projecting 702,200 trainees in 2026/27.

Dual-training programmes are also being expanded to strengthen links between institutions and industry.

The objective is increasingly to make tertiary education about skills as well as academic qualifications.

TVET programmes are being aligned with competency-based training, industry partnerships and emerging labour-market requirements.

At the heart of the transformation is CBE, which seeks to shift learning away from an emphasis on memorisation towards competencies, skills, application and problem-solving.

President Ruto has described the philosophy as, “The previous education system was about how much you could remember, memorise and regurgitate.”

He has argued that the new system is intended to align learning with the demands of a technology-driven economy, particularly through STEM.

The reform has required teacher retooling, new assessment approaches, learning materials and infrastructure. TSC and the Ministry have undertaken teacher preparation as learners move through the new system.

The Open University of Kenya—chartered in 2023—has created a dedicated platform for virtual university education. The institution describes itself as Kenya's university for inclusive, flexible and digitally enabled learning.