Education funding transparency
Introduction
NAIROBI — Where education money actually lands, traced from donor to classroom. What began as a local difficulty is now a structural one, and it shapes daily life for every household here. This brief sets out the evidence, the cost of inaction, and what should follow.
The problem, before the work started
Money reaches education budgets and then becomes difficult to follow. Households absorbed the difference themselves — in time, in money, and in risks they would not otherwise take. Those costs rarely appear in a budget line, but they decide whether a family recovers or slips further.
You cannot argue about a shortfall until everyone can see the same number.
Grace Wanjiru, policy analyst
How the work was delivered
Published, itemised spending makes the gap between allocation and delivery visible. The approach was chosen because it survives the conditions here: staff turnover, seasonal access, and a population that may move at short notice.
- Every disbursement published within the quarter it is made
- School-level figures, not district aggregates
- Categories agreed with the ministry so the data can be compared
- An open format any organisation can reuse
What changed beyond the immediate goal
The direct objective was met, but the effects that matter most were the ones we did not set out to produce.
1. Faster correction
Schools missing a disbursement were identified in weeks rather than at the annual audit.
2. Better questions
Local committees arrived at meetings with the figures already read.
3. Comparable years
A stable format made the second year's data worth something, which the first year's alone was not.
What comes next
The next release adds teacher deployment alongside spending, so both can be read together. The measure of success is not how long we stay, but whether the work continues once we have gone.
