The Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS) currently lists 5.05 million primary school learners, far short of the 7.2 million projected enrolment, creating a shortfall of almost two million pupils.

Director of Education for KEMIS, Fredrick Mujumba, said the ministry has finished registering learning institutions, but many schools appear in the system with zero learners recorded.

Mujumba highlighted that primary schools have 2,615,822 male and 2,442,600 female learners registered, while senior and junior schools show smaller gaps between expected and recorded numbers.

Nelson Sifuna, head of the Directorate of Field Coordination, warned that schools failing to register all learners in KEMIS will not receive capitation funding for the missing pupils.

Sifuna urged the 15,000 school administrators at the KCSHA conference to work with ICT officers to ensure every child is entered into the database, noting that complaints of incomplete capitation stem from unregistered learners.

The ministry is developing a learner registry and plans to add a human‑resource registry and other databases to improve education planning and decision‑making.

Since the 2024 transition from NEMIS to KEMIS, the system aims to provide verifiable enrolment records that guide the allocation of teachers, textbooks and other resources.

Stephen Barongo, head of the Directorate of Primary Education, confirmed that the requirement for learners to present birth certificates for registration has been removed to ease school entry for children lacking the document.