The Ministry of Education has announced plans to introduce a digital tracking system that will monitor the distribution of school textbooks in real time.
Speaking on Tuesday, May 6, Education Principal Secretary Julius Bitok said the new system is intended to address longstanding challenges in the movement of books from suppliers to schools.
"We are streamlining this space of book distribution, we are bringing in technology, and we are saying, going forward, we shall have a new system that is going to be able to monitor book distribution in real time," he said.
He added: "I admit that there are challenges of book distribution, but we are working on a digital system that is going to ensure that we monitor in real time how books are able to move to schools."
Meanwhile, Bitok acknowledged that some schools are facing shortages in newly introduced specialised learning areas under the new curriculum.
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"We have a small challenge on the new highly specialized areas which were not part of the previous curriculum. CBE is a new curriculum that has just been 5 months into Senior school.
"We are doing everything possible to ensure that books for these areas are availed to the schools that offer them," he further said.
Bitok also said the government is pursuing a policy aimed at expanding capacity in high-demand schools so that more learners can access institutions with strong academic records.
"The government policy now is that we need to increase capacity in the popular schools, and the reason we are doing that is because these large schools have strong traditions of excellence, and we feel it is important to give more students an opportunity to learn in these institutions," he stated.
Elsewhere, this comes months after Bitok announced plans to consolidate the country's entire education ecosystem under a unified digital platform.
Speaking during the release of the 2025 KCSE examination results on Friday, January 9, he outlined the government's vision for a comprehensive digital education management system.
Bitok revealed that the Ministry is implementing the Kenya Education Management Information System (KEMIS), which will serve as a one-stop platform for all education-related information and services.
"Very soon, the entire education ecosystem will be under one digital platform so that whatever thing you need to know in education, just at the click of a button, you can know the status of the results of your student and you can know everything going on in the education sector," he stated.
Bitok noted that the new system is already being utilized in managing student placements and transitions, particularly for the 1.1 million learners moving from junior school to senior school under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC).
He highlighted that the digital platform has enhanced transparency in the student placement process, giving learners unprecedented opportunities to select their preferred pathways.
"The system is very transparent. We are using a very open and digital and transparent process to ensure that every learner in this country gets an opportunity to go to any school of their choice depending on the capacity of these schools," he explained.
