It was supposed to be a quiet New Year’s Day for Grace Wanjiku, a mother in Nairobi’s Buruburu estate. Instead, it turned into a panic-fueled morning when she logged into the Ministry of Education’s portal to download her son’s admission letter. Last week, the system confirmed he had secured a slot at Starehe Boys’ Centre—a dream come true. Yesterday, the screen displayed a different name entirely: Oloolaise High School, a Cluster 2 institution in Ngong.

She had not requested a transfer. She had not clicked “review.” Yet, the system had unilaterally decided her son’s fate.

“I thought I was seeing things,” Wanjiku told Streamline News, clutching a printout of the initial result. “We celebrated. We told the grandparents. Now the government tells me I applied for a change I never made? This is not just an error; it is a betrayal.”

Wanjiku is not alone. Across the country, thousands of parents are grappling with a digital scandal that threatens to derail the pioneer Grade 10 class of the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). What the Ministry of Education describes as “technical friction” feels, to the Kenyan parent, like a systemic erasure of their children’s hard work.

The 'Phantom' Applications

The core of the outrage lies not in the lack of spaces, but in the unauthorized alteration of placement records. The Ministry, led by Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba, had opened a review window between December 23 and 29, 2025, for unhappy parents to appeal their slots. But reports are flooding in from parents who were satisfied with their initial placement, did nothing, and still found their children moved.

In one egregious case verified by Streamline News, a student from Kilifi County was inexplicably reassigned to a day school in Homa Bay—a distance of over 850 kilometers. For a day scholar, this is a logistical impossibility.

“How does a computer algorithm decide that a child can commute from the Coast to Nyanza daily?” asked education analyst Dr. Amos Kabira. “This points to a fundamental corruption of the data integrity at the Konza control station. It is not just a glitch; it is negligence.”

Ministry Blames Capacity, Parents Blame the System

The official response has done little to quell the anger. Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Dr. Julius Bitok, has cited “capacity constraints,” noting that over 20,000 learners jostled for a mere 500 slots in top-tier schools like Alliance and Kenya High. He admitted to “technical challenges” hosted at the Konza Technopolis but insisted the issues were resolved.

However, this explanation fails to address why confirmed placements were revoked without notice. The Ministry has now announced a second review window running from January 6 to January 9, 2026. For parents, this is too little, too late.

• Reporting Date: January 12, 2026 (less than two weeks away).
• Financial Impact: Parents who bought uniforms for School A now face wasted expenditure.
• The Queue: Hundreds have camped at Jogoo House, desperate for manual intervention.

The Cost of Confusion

For the average Kenyan household, this uncertainty has a price tag. The transition to Senior School is already expensive, with the government releasing KES 44 billion in capitation funds that schools say have yet to hit accounts. But for parents, the immediate cost is travel and time.

At Jogoo House, the line of distraught parents snaked around the building yesterday. Many had traveled from upcountry, spending upwards of KES 3,000 (approx. $23) on bus fare—money that should have gone towards school fees.

“I have spent my January rent to come here,” said Peter Otieno, a father from Nakuru. “They tell us to go online, but the online system is the thief that stole our slot. How can we trust it again?”

As the January 12 deadline looms, the Ministry’s assurance that “88% of learners are correctly placed” rings hollow to the 12% left in limbo. In a country where education is viewed as the only exit from poverty, tampering with placement results is not just an administrative error—it is playing with fire.