How we handle data
Every field on this site traces to a named source, and where we hold nothing the page says so rather than filling the gap. Fees appear only when a school publishes them, and we never estimate them. We publish no ratings and no enrolment figures, because we hold none. The total reads 77,717 and not a round number because it is a count of records we can trace.
Every source, with its publisher, year and link, is on the methodology and sources page.
What a record can say
Each school page carries one of these. It describes where the record came from, never how good the school is. Only the last can be earned, and only by the school itself.
The school appears on the Ministry of Education school list of 2016. Name, level, ownership, sponsor, county, sub-county and ward are as that list has them. 35,072 schools carry this as their lead source.
The school appears on the Ministry of Education EMIS school list of 2010, the only public list that names pre-primary centres. It predates the 2010 Constitution, so it records the old district rather than today's sub-county; where we could not place the school in a sub-county from its position, the field is empty and the page says so. 36,022 schools carry this as their lead source.
The school was mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors and appears on no Ministry list we hold. The position is theirs; the name is as they wrote it. 3,098 schools sit here, and they are published under the Open Database Licence rather than the register's attribution licence.
The institution appears in a list published by the Commission for University Education, TVET Authority and Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service. 3,735 records carry at least one such listing, and 3,524 of them come from no other source. Accreditation status and dates are shown only as the regulator publishes them.
Someone at the school wrote to us from a school address and confirmed the details, or corrected them. A confirmation overrides the register. No school holds this yet, because the directory has only just opened.
Which source each record came from
| Source | Schools | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Education EMIS list, 2010 | 36,022 | 46.4% |
| Ministry of Education school list, 2016 | 35,072 | 45.1% |
| Listed by the TVET Authority | 3,126 | 4.0% |
| OpenStreetMap | 3,098 | 4.0% |
| Listed by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service | 263 | 0.3% |
| Kenya Medical Training College campus list | 80 | 0.1% |
| Listed by the Commission for University Education | 55 | 0.1% |
| wikipedia | 1 | 0.0% |
What we hold, and what we do not
| Field | Schools with it | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Name and level | 77,717 | 100% |
| County | 77,568 | 99.8% |
| Sub-county | 69,301 | 89.2% |
| Trusted position on the map | 67,392 | 86.7%, at the precision below |
| Mapped at the school itself | 66,203 | 85.2% |
| Telephone | 81 | 0.1% |
| Mapped at the school and reachable | 2 | 0.0% |
| Website | 0 | 0.0% |
| Fees | From schools | shown when the school publishes them, never estimated |
| Ratings | 0 | none held, none published |
| Enrolment | 0 | none held, none published |
Most records from the 2010 list name a district that no longer exists, because the list was written before the 2010 Constitution created the counties and sub-counties. Where such a record has a position we trust as the school's own, we place it in the sub-county whose boundary contains that point, using the geoBoundaries sub-county map, and only when that boundary lies in the county the record already names. 36,443 records got their sub-county this way, and the data marks each one as worked out from position. A sub-county that a source names always stands. 8,267 records still carry a county but no sub-county, because their position is approximate, untrusted or missing, lands in another county, or lands in a boundary whose name matches no sub-county on the Ministry lists. We leave those empty and the page says so.
How precise the map is
Every school with a trusted position is on the map, and the pin says how far it can be trusted. The 2016 list and the 2010 list each carry the coordinates their enumerators recorded, and OpenStreetMap carries the mapper's. We keep a coordinate as the school's own position only when it falls inside the county the record names and no differently named school shares the same point. A coordinate that fails either test is kept in the data, drawn as no pin and used for no distance or nearby list.
A solid pin is the school’s own position. A hollow pin is the centre of its sub-county or county, and says so when you open it. A school that claims its page can put the pin on its own gate, which is the only way this is ever exactly right.
| What the pin means | Schools | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The school's own position | 66,203 | 85.2% |
| The centre of its town | 0 | 0.0% |
| The centre of its district | 1,187 | 1.5% |
| The centre of its region only | 2 | 0.0% |
| Location approximate: differently named schools share one position, so no pin is drawn | 5,092 | 6.6% |
| Location untrusted: the position lies outside its stated region, so no pin is drawn | 1,783 | 2.3% |
| No position held | 3,450 | 4.4% |
What the level labels mean, in this register
The lists predate the competency-based curriculum, so the labels are theirs, not a judgement of ours. A school the 2016 list calls secondary (9,354 records) is shown as secondary and is not relabelled a senior school by assumption; senior schools are named only from the placement circulars. Junior schools, Grade 7 to 9, mostly sit on a primary school's campus and are listed with it. 3,692 records, 5% of the directory, name no level at all and are marked not stated; they are left out of the level counts rather than guessed from the name.
Questions people ask
- Where does this data come from?
- School name, level, ownership, county and sub-county come from two Ministry of Education lists: the 2016 school list published through the World Bank's energy data portal, and the 2010 EMIS list published by the American Red Cross on the Humanitarian Data Exchange. Both are open under Creative Commons Attribution. Universities, TVET institutions, medical training colleges and placement institutions come from the lists published by the Commission for University Education, TVET Authority and Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service and the Kenya Medical Training College. A small number of schools come only from OpenStreetMap, and say so. Every source is listed in full, with how the records were matched, on the methodology page.
- Do you publish school fees?
- Yes, when the school gives them to us. A school publishes its fees through its SchoolRegistry profile, and they appear on its page with the date it published them. We never estimate a fee. Where a directory shows you a fee range it did not collect, that range is an estimate dressed as a fact.
- Do you rate or rank schools?
- No. We publish no ratings, no stars and no scores, because we have measured nothing. The only ranking on the site is by how many schools a region or district holds, which is a count rather than a judgement.
- A detail about my school is wrong. How do I correct it?
- Write to data@schoolregistrykenya.com from an address at the school, naming the school and the field that is wrong. A correction confirmed by the school replaces whatever the register says, and the page then reads Confirmed by the school.
- Why is my school's pin in the wrong place?
- Because we do not know exactly where it is. A hollow pin is the centre of the town or district the record is filed under, rather than the school, and the map says so when you open it. A solid pin is the school's own position. Some records show no pin at all and say Location approximate: either several differently named schools were given exactly the same position, or the position falls in a different region from the one the record names. We keep those coordinates in the data, draw no pin from them and use them for no distance or nearby list. Claiming the page lets you drop the pin on your own gate, which is the only way it will ever be exactly right.
- Why is so much of a school's page empty?
- Because no public register in Kenya holds it. Every school gets the same set of fields whether we have the answer or not, so you can see exactly what is known and what is not. Most of the blanks can only be answered by the school, and filling them is free.
- Why does the directory hold 77,717 schools rather than a round number?
- Because it is a count of records we can trace, not an estimate. The seven lists overlap heavily: the same school often appears on two or three of them, and matching by name, county and position brings them down to 77,717 institutions. 149 records name no county we could place them in and are reachable only by search.