The revelation by the Ministry of Education that 300,000 learners who sat last year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam are yet to join Form One is quite disconcerting.

Lack of school fees is the main reason why such a huge number of students has not reported to school.
The revelations come on the backdrop of an upsurge of institutions involved in the award of bursaries and scholarships to bright but needy learners. These include bursary kitties by some banks and the National Government-Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF).

Notwithstanding, hundreds of thousands of deserving cases are still left out.
While it is worth commending all the various schemes and programmes that have managed to pull together resources towards this cause, as they are promoting Article 431(f) of the Constitution that guarantees every Kenyan child free and compulsory education, the confusion that mires the whole process needs to be addressed.

The number of needy learners surfacing after all organisations issuing scholarships and bursaries have finalised the exercise, seeking for assistance, calls for a review of the approach.

Last week, Kenyans witnessed cases of desperate learners turning up in institutions with only uniform of their previous primary school and calling letters. This left head teachers, whose schools are facing financial constraints, in a quandary.

Perhaps it is time Parliament enacted a law to regulate the award of bursaries and scholarships to ensure all deserving cases are considered.

Such a law should, among other issues, formulate clear guidelines that would make issuing of bursaries harmonised and ensure efficiency in allocation.

The guidelines should ensure transparency, from the time a learner sends in an application to the time it is either accepted or rejected. The current system is opaque and prone to abuse.

At the constituency level, bursaries and scholarships have been used for political expediency where only learners from areas considered “politically friendly” to the MP or MCA are awarded.

There have also been cases of bribery, nepotism and favouritism which should be addressed by the enactment of a law to create a clear framework through which all the organisations purporting to award scholarships would operate.