Adequacy And Quality Of Teaching And Learning Resources In Public Primary Schools In Ndaragwa Division, Nyandarua County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The Free Primary Education (FPE) programme was commissioned in January 2003 to

provide basic education to all Kenyan children of school going age and to ease the

burden of cost sharing from the parents. The public primary school class teachers

were to shoulder the greatest responsibility in the implementation of this programme

but the assessment of the success of this programme has not involved the class

teachers who are the main stakeholders. The study therefore aimed at assessing the

adequacy and quality of FPE based on the perceptions of the class and head teachers

in public primary schools in Ndaragwa Division, Nyandarua County. The assessment

of the programme was based on four aspects of the programme which included: the

provision of teaching / learning materials, provision of physical facilities, provision of

teachers, and the roles played by the School Management Committees. A survey was

conducted to collect information from 130 class teachers and 23 head teachers who

were purposively selected from 23 schools. A structured questionnaire consisting of

38-items was used to gauge the perceptions of the respondents on each item on a five

point Likert scale (1=Very Inadequate to indicate lack of enough materials,

2=Inadequate, 3=moderately adequate, 4=Adequate and 5=Very Adequate, to indicate

satisfactory levels of the materials). The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics

for objective one to four (means and frequency distributions) and inferential statistics

for objective five (t-test). This was done with the aid of the Statistical Package for the

Social Science (SPSS version 21). The results of the study revealed that there existed

a variation in the adequacy and quality of the items provided by the FPE programme

in Ndaragwa division. The quality of teaching and learning materials, physical

facilities, and management committees was found to be Moderately Adequate, while

that of the teachers was found to be Adequate. The adequacy of the teaching and

learning materials, physical facilities, and management committees was found to be

Moderately Adequate, while that of the teachers was found to be Adequate.

Significant differences (p≤ 05) were found between the class teachers and head

teachers’ assessment of the adequacy of the learning and teaching resources, while no

significant differences (p≥.05) were found in quality. Implementing the

recommendations of this research could assist push the country closer to achieving

Universal Education For All (UFA) by 2015 which is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).