A parliamentary Committee has raised concerns over millions of shillings paid by public secondary schools to the Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KSSHA), saying public money may be going to a private organisation without adequate scrutiny.
The National Assembly Public Investments Committee on Governance and Education said its review of Auditor-General reports had identified substantial payments to KSSHA by several national schools over five financial years.
Committee chairman Dick Maungu, the MP for Luanda, said one of the schools examined had paid about Sh6m to the association, while another had paid approximately Sh5m.
“If you convert them into all the schools in the country, there are billions going to KSSHA, and we want to find out whether KSSHA is a recipient of public money,” Maungu said.
He questioned how an organisation that is not a government entity could receive money from public schools without being subjected to the same level of accountability as public institutions.
“KSSHA is a private members’ organisation. The activities they are doing may be good and necessary, but the contributions are public funds. If it is public money, it must be accounted for,” he said.
The committee is examining Auditor-General reports covering the 2020/21 to 2024/25 financial years for several national schools in Kenya’s Nyanza and Western regions.
Principals and senior managers from Ng’iya Girls High School, Maseno School, Bunyore Girls High School, Chavakali Boys High School, Maranda High School and Kisumu Girls High School appeared before the committee at the Royal Swiss Hotel in Kisumu on Thursday.
Payments to KSSHA were among the audit queries raised against the schools.
Maseno School principal Peter Owino Otieno told the committee that the payments had been made in good faith to support students taking part in co-curricular activities.
He said schools were expected to pay annual subscriptions to KSSHA and that failure to do so could prevent students from taking part in regional and national competitions in sports, drama and music.
“Management fully accepts the auditor’s observation regarding the transfers made to KSSHA. These transfers were made in good faith strictly to facilitate students’ co-curricular and extracurricular activities,” Owino said.
He said students could be excluded from competitions if the school did not make the payments.
Owino acknowledged concerns about the way the money was transferred and called for a policy intervention to regularise the arrangement.
“The permanent regularisation of this payment channel requires policy intervention from higher authorities,” he said.
He argued that KSSHA’s activities extended beyond its members and included programmes benefiting schools and students.
But MPs said the legality and accountability of the payments first had to be established.
Lungalunga MP Chiforomodo Mangale said the committee needed to establish KSSHA’s legal status and its relationship with public schools and the government.
“We must start from the point of understanding how these funds are transferred to KSSHA. KSSHA is an organisation for teachers who head schools, and there was no clear indication that it is a government entity,” Mangale said.
Kiminini MP Maurice Kakai Bisau described KSSHA as a private organisation whose membership is drawn from school heads.
“KSSHA remains a private club, a private organisation managed by principals in the teaching fraternity. In the absence of it being formalised, we still look at it as a private members’ organisation,” Bisau said.
He said the committee needed to establish who owned and controlled KSSHA and the legal basis for public schools sending money to it.
“This is something we need to interrogate because we cannot continue seeing funds being sent to an organisation without proper control and accountability,” he said.
Maungu said the committee would summon KSSHA officials to explain how money received from public schools was used and the legal framework under which the association operated.
“We want to know why a private members’ club should enjoy public money yet its operations cannot be publicly scrutinised like those of a public institution,” he said.
He said the issue had persisted for years, partly because Parliament had previously faced a heavy workload in examining public institutions.
Maungu said the division of the former Public Investments Committee into three specialised committees had allowed Parliament to conduct more detailed scrutiny.
“We are proud as a Parliament that we have been able to look at the Auditor-General’s reports to the present. Right now, we are looking at 2025/26, meaning we are now current,” he said.
The committee said it would pursue the matter with KSSHA officials and relevant government agencies.
The committee also identified weaknesses in financial management and accounting systems in some schools.
Maungu said some schools were struggling to move from systems previously used for school audits to the requirements of the current public financial management framework.
He said some school managers had also not fully adopted Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), which apply to public institutions.
“The shift from the school audit system, where they used to operate using different systems, to the new systems has been a challenge,” he said.
He called for school managers and bursars to receive more training to help them comply with financial management requirements.
“Some of these schools are not shifting to Public Sector Accounting Standards. We need to know why, and they need to be empowered so that they can be able to do the right thing,” Maungu said.
Despite the concerns, he said the committee was impressed by the overall performance of the schools and the work of their management teams.
“By and large, what we have seen is impressive,” he said.
Bunyore Girls High School chief principal Judith Agade told the committee that some expenditure questioned by auditors had been used to support students’ activities and train deputy principals, bursars and teachers through workshops.
She said the spending was intended to improve staff capacity and support students.
The committee also noted that most school fund managers did not have the requisite qualifications, raising further concerns about the management of public funds in schools.
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