PHD-Department of Educational Management Policy & Curriculum Studies.
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Browsing PHD-Department of Educational Management Policy & Curriculum Studies. by Author "Gravenir, F. Q."
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Item Effectiveness of constituency bursary committees in promoting access and retention in secondary education : a case of Nairobi and Machakos counties(2012-03-30) Mukirae, S. Njihia; Olembo, J. O.; Gravenir, F. Q.The Kenyan government transferred the management of the secondary education bursary fund from Head teachers and School's Boards of Governors to the newly created Constituency Bursary Committees (CBCs) in the 200312004 financial year in line with its policy of decentralization. It is a tenet of decentralization that it leads to enhanced efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability and local participation in service delivery. However, some educational stakeholders have criticized the new system of disbursing bursaries as inefficient and ineffective and have numerously called on the government to re-examine it. It is against this background that this study was conceived and executed with a view to: capturing the perceptions of stakeholders with regard to the new secondary education bursary disbursement procedure, determining the effectiveness and equitability of the CBCs in bursary disbursement, and mapping the challenges facing the CBCs. This study adopted an exploratory approach using a descriptive survey design. The study locations were Nairobi County and Machakos County. The target population included members of the CBC, Secondary schools Head teachers, BoG chairpersons, PTA chair persons, elected Councillors, Parents, Students, Religious leaders, KNUT officials and DEOs. Data was collected through questionnaires and interview schedules. The study established that the CBCs were rated lowly by the stakeholders. In a five point likert scale (1 low, 5 high), the CBCs scooped very low scores on a number of key variables namely: efficiency (2.48), transparency (2.36), accountability (2.34), representation of local community (2.40), competence (2.19), and fairness (2.50). The study established that the majority of the stakeholders, especially Parents, BoG members, PTA members, Head teachers and KNUT Officials, would prefer that the Secondary Education Bursary Scheme be managed at the school level. The study further established that the decentralized bursary scheme. was inefficient with regard to timeliness in making bursary awards for it took more than two months for 50% of the applicants to get their bursary. It also emerged that the bursary had a limited reach as only 21.9% of the applicants in the 13 constituencies received bursaries over a three year period. Indeed, some constituencies had a reach averaging around 10% over the three year period meaning many of the applicants were unsuccessful. According to the head teachers, some 4302 very needy students were locked out of the bursary and some 65 students dropped out of school due to lack of school fees. The study also tested some five hypotheses using ANOV A and established that the bursary was equitable with regard to gender(p-value 0.474), type of school attended( p-value 0.068), type of family set up(p-value 0.000), family income(p-value 0.000), and region of residence-urban or rural(p-value 0.013). The CBCs faced a number of challenges e.g., political interference by MPs, limited funds against a high number of bursary applicants, delayed release of funds by the MoE, and lack of capacity. In order to improve the effectiveness of the CBCs, the recommends that: MPs should cease being the patrons of the CBCs so as to curb their influence, government should increase bursary allocation in order to benefit more students, government should stick to a schedule for releasing the bursary as this would enable CBCs to plan, and that teachers should be more involved in the screening bursary applicants at school level.Item Equity dimensions in public university education in Kenya: an analysis of parallel and regular undergraduate platforms(2011-05-01) Otieno, Mary Akinyi; Gravenir, F. Q.; Jothan Olembo ObisiThe rapid expansion of university education in Kenya has necessitated inevitable reconfigurations and innovations in access and finance issues. Part of this is evident in the high demand for university education that has seen the mounting of alternative platforms variously called parallel, self-sponsored or module 11. As of necessity, such developments come with inevitable consequences, including altering the pattern of access by socio-economic groups as well as gender, in as much as they engender institutional differentiation manifested in the appropriation of private funds, occasioned by differential enrolment of paying students. The dualistic admission policy has the potential of engendering inequalities among social groups, gender and between institutions, principally because, by `liberalising' education, it opens up university admission to those students able to pay the fees. This poses a threat to equitable distribution of education opportunities in public universities. It is for this reason that the current study investigated the equity issues in Kenya's public university system since the mounting of the parallel platform, to identify equity dimensions evident in the provision of public university education in the parallel and regular undergraduate degree platforms on the basis of socio-economic status, gender equity, degree programmes equity and institutional equity. The study was carried out in three public universities namely: University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Moi University. The target population was 61,115 and the sample size was 748. The sample size was derived from Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) Tables for determining appropriate sample size given a specified population. Purposive sampling was used to select 40 university administrative staff and another 8 respondents from eight organisations referred to in this study as (education experts/policy makers). Two types of research instruments were used: interview guide and questionnaires. Questionnaires were administered to public university students and academic staff while interview guide was administered to the education policy makers (education experts) as university administrators, CHE, MoEST, JAB staff, World Bank, KIPPRA, Rockefeller, IPAR and Ford Foundation. Data analysis for this study was done both quantitatively and qualitatively. Chi Square statistical analysis was used in this study to compare frequencies occurring in different groups such as students, public university administrative and academic staff, including policy makers and education experts in university education on the four variables for the study. In line with the study objectives, six hypotheses were designed for this study and the results generated made the study findings, viz; Five objectives were investigated and the results indicated that there were differences in enrolment across gender by platform, that distributions of regular students by gender in the three public universities in the two (MI & MII) study platforms differed significantly, that students from the more affluent families (middle and high SES) dominated positions on the MII platforms, that irrespective of gender, the students' presence in any platform is determined by their parents/guardian/family SES, however gender on its own cannot determine a student's presence in either MI or MIL Furthermore, being female from lower SES diminished a student's chances of participating in pure science based programmes in public university education. While the socio-economic status of a female student's family would influence preference of the degree programme pursued, the same conclusion is not true for male students. The study concludes that there is a persistent gap in university education participation, between students from richer and poorer family backgrounds and recommends instituting gender equity structures by JAB and the government of Kenya