Teachers urge Education Ministry to prolong NEMIS Learner Registration deadline

Educators nationwide are currently requesting the Ministry of Education to prolong the date by which learners can be registered within the National Education Management Information System (Nemis).

They stated this request results from the continuous failures of the system. The deadline, which passed at midnight on Easter Monday, left numerous schools unable to complete the process due to ongoing technical difficulties.

It has also united members of the Kenya Primary Schools Heads Association (Kepsha) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut), both expressing dissatisfaction with the ‘inept’ Nemis portal, which has frequently ‘experienced downtime in the past two weeks. ’

According to Kepsha’s national chairperson, Fuad Ali, many headteachers failed to input any information as the system crashed numerous times or did not load.

That system requires an immediate upgrade as most of its data is critical for informing capitation funding for the upcoming school term.

Failure to register will result in numerous schools being underfunded by the government.

He urged the ministry to allocate the schools an additional day or two to complete the registration procedures.

It is intended to replace Nemis, which, since 2017, has been digitizing data in public and private primary schools across the country and assigns each learner a unique personal identifier to monitor the learner’s academic path.

However, access issues and delays in issuing login credentials to headteachers have caused inefficiencies within the system.

Knut Secretary General Cohin Oyuu echoed the demand for extension, asserting that technical glitches should not hinder learners from being registered.

He cautioned that absence from the Nemis database would prevent children from accessing educational facilities and financial assistance.

This poses a challenge in the registration process for young children whose parents lack copies of their birth certificates, which are crucial for generating a UPI.

This is particularly frequent among children who have been entrusted to guardians or grandparents.

Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogambo stressed during a recent visit to Bomet County that planning and resource distribution would heavily depend on the data produced by Nemis.

The shortcomings of Nemis are indeed becoming a significant issue for many educators. The ministry may need to address it as a matter of urgency.