Browsing by Author "Ndiritu, John K."
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Item Assessment of quality of public day secondary schools in Kitui south constituency of Kitui county, Kenya(2014-08-19) Mwanzia, Alfred Samuel; Nyerere, J.K.A.; Ndiritu, John K.The research problem addressed in this study was that, despite the government's realisation of the need for quality secondary education for all Kenyan children, the continued unsupervised expansion of day secondary schools is likely to negate the vision. The purpose of this study was therefore to establish the quality of public day secondary schools in Kitui South Constituency of Kitui County, Kenya. The objective of this study was to establish whether the public day secondary schools have the minimum physical facilities, are well resourced and staffed with teachers with relevant qualification. The study adopted social constructivism theory of learning. A conceptual framework for understanding education quality from UNESCO was adapted for the study. Literature was reviewed on school-bsased factors that determine education quality. Kitui South Constituency has 20 public day secondary school which were established from 2003 onwards. The study used descriptive research design to collect data from a population of 20 principals, 88 teachers and 3,016 students in public day secondary schools. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 10 (50%) principals, 40 (45%) teachers and 500 (17%) students. The research instruments were tested and found to be reliable with a Split-Half coefficient of 0.90, 0.83 and 0.80 for principals', teachers' and students' questionnaires respectively. The research instruments were then administered to all the sampled schools, and the data cleaned, coded and then subjected to the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 21 for analysis. The statistics used were frequency counts, means and percentages. The analysed data were presented using frequency distribution tables, pie charts and bar graphs. The study found out that majority of day public secondary schools lacked basic physical facilities such as classrooms (20%), offices and staffrooms (50%), science laboratory (80%), library (100%) and students' desks (80%). Majority of the schools were also found to have inadequate laboratory apparatus and chemicals (60%), reference textbooks (55%) and high textbook ratio of over two students per copy of textbook (90%). The study further showed that 50% of the schools did not have adequate number of teachers, while 55% of the available teachers had secondary school certificate as their highest academic attainment and 44.3% did not have teacher training qualification. Teachers were also found to use teaching strategies which are not leaner-centred, with more than 70% of them not covering syllabus. The study therefore concluded that public day secondary schools in Kitui South Constituency offer low quality education and as such, they are of low quality. The researcher recommends that the Government increase infrastructure funds to schools and allocate more funds to Teachers Service Commission for employment of more teachers. The researcher also recommends that the Government organises capacity building programmes for all teachers, as well as strengthening quality assurance services in public day secondary Schools in Kitui South Constituency with a view of improving curriculum implementation.Item Determinants of Education Output in Public Secondary Schools in Central Province, Kenya(2012-03-19) Ndiritu, John K.Secondary education is indeed a crucial stage for the education system. This is where some primary schoolteachers are trained; it is also where the future students of higher education are selected having been taught essential skills. It is believed that students enter secondary schools as children and leave as young adults. This change of children to young educated adults calls for various inputs within the school setup. Each of these inputs is assumed to have a certain impact on the young adult produced by the school. It is, therefore, crucial to evaluate all the processes that students undergo through the secondary education level with an aim of identifying educational inputs with the greatest impact on the school product (output). This study was aimed at establishing the major determinants of output in secondary education and the extent to which each educational input used in the study explains the output. The study used survey design, which is concerned with the generalized statistics that result when data are abstracted from a number of individual cases. This study was carried out in Central Province, Kenya. According to Ministry of Education, Statistics Section, there were 690 public secondary schools in Central Province by 2008. Further, there was a total of205,157 students in the province by 2008. The study was carried out in the public secondary schools where a sample of 69 public secondary schools represented by the head teachers, and 400 students were used from the province. The researcher used two questionnaires; one for the head teachers and another for form four students. Data analysis was done using SPSS and STATA. Regression analysis was used to estimate the relationship between inputs and educational output. After the study it came out clearly that among the endogenous inputs, the key determinant input on education output is student prior performance. The researcher regressed student current performance against his/her previous performance and the result gave a coefficient of determination of 94.3%. The second key determinant of education output is teacher experience. For the sake of this study, three year experience was used as the benchmark for an experienced teacher. On regressing student performance against teachers' experience, the results indicated that experience accounts for 75.7% of variability in the student performance. Further, the study found that most endogenous and exogenous inputs are key determinants of female than male student performance. The study recommends that the government and other stakeholders should provide more resources to ensure that more teachers at secondary school level acquire more skills. The fact that the higher the teacher qualification, the better the student performance means that more resources should be provided to ensure that even those teachers with the first degree pursue masters and doctoral degrees. Further, educational policy-makers should ensure that the investment made in teachers is sufficient and proportionate to the demands placed upon them. The fact that education inputs determine performance in females more than in males implies that female students in co-educational institutes should be fully equipped, while girls schools should be provided with more facilities. Based on these recommendations, the study proposes that similar studies should be carried out in primary and university levels of education. Further, a study on key determinants of male performance should be carried out as the inputs used in the study showed very low impact on male performance.Item Optimal Size and existence of economies of scale in Public Secondary Schools: Nyandarua District, Kenya(2012-02-03) Ndiritu, John K.Abstract The ever increasing demand for education, the expansion of the education systems and the rising costs in education due to world-wide inflation, have led to massive increase in educational spending in most countries. For example, the rate of increase of Kenya's public expenditure on education has been greater than the increase in total public expenditure, which has in turn exceeded the rate of increase in G.N.P, (Republic of Kenya 1998). This has reinforced the determination to cut governmental spending on education. A more fundamental effort in most countries is the attempt to make individual recipient of the benefits of education pay a bigger share of the cost. This supplements the share contributed by other stakeholders in education. From this, there is every reason for the stakeholders to have an idea on whether the resources they provide are utilized efficiently. This study was therefore designed to investigate the extent of efficient resource utilization for public secondary schools in Nyandarua District. The main objective of the study was to investigate the optimal size and establish whether these schools enjoyed internal economies of scale in their operations. The basic significance for the study was to give information and shed light to stakeholders on whether to establish new schools or expand the existing ones based on the extent of resource utilization. Literature review was done from all spheres on optimal size, unit cost and economics of scale. The study involved a population of 80 public secondary schools. Data from the field was collected from a sample of 24 public secondary schools in Nyandarua District, which represented 30% of schools. Stratified random, proportionate and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the sample. The research instrument for this study was a detailed headteachers' questionnaire on school and its resources. Piloting was done in two schools, which were not included in the sample. The pilot study was carried out to pretest the validity and reliability of the research instrument. The researcher individually collected data from the field. It was then analyzed through basic descriptive statistics. In addition, regression analysis was used. To get the optimal size and determine existence of economies of scale an Econometric package (e'Views) was used together with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study found that the optimal size for the schools was 400 students, while the optimal cost of educating a single secondary school pupil was Ksh 29,787.19 per year. The study also found that there would be significant savings if a school increases its size towards the optimal. In addition, the study concluded that the secondary schools under study enjoyed economies of scale in their operations. Nevertheless, there was inefficiency in their operations. Based on research findings, the study recommends that establishing new schools should not be a priority until all the existing ones attain the optimal size to ensure that all the inputs are efficiently utilized. The study further recommends that guidance and counseling should be intensified to improve the poor performance registered in these schools.Item Parental influence on academic performance in public primary schools in Nakuru north district, Nakuru county, Kenya(Kenyatta University, 2014) Macharia, Daniel W; Itegi, Florence M.; Ndiritu, John K.Education is a key factor to the development of any nation in the world. It has been the intension of the government that all KCPE candidates join secondary schools. Since 2003, the government has been providing funds to all public primary schools to promote access and education standards in all parts of the country. However, quite a number of public primary schools have been performing poorly in KCPE. In Nakuru North District, the average KCPE performance in 2011 was 222.5 marks. The problem is that parents seem to have a lot of influence in pupils’ academic performance in public primary schools. The study was guided by the general system theory which is based on the work of a biologist Ludwing van Bartalanify and social system theory. The purpose of the study was to investigate the parental influence on academic performance in public primary schools in Nakuru North District. The objectives of the study were therefore to establish parental roles, parental economic factors, cultural practices and parental background influencing academic performance in public primary schools in Nakuru North District. A descriptive survey was used in the study. The target population was 40 public primary schools. There were 8 public primary schools headed by female teachers and 32 public primary schools headed by male teachers. The 25% used to select both female and male head teachers would match with that used to determine the sample size. The two primary schools headed by female teachers and the eight primary schools headed by male teachers were selected among 8 and 32 primary schools respectively by systematic (or interval) sampling. The district had 800 teachers with an average of 20 teachers per school. There were 2960 standard 8 pupils with an average of 74 pupils per school. Purposive sampling was used to select the head teacher in each sampled primary school. The researcher selected 20% of both teachers (4) and standard 8 pupils (14). Different questionnaires were administered to the head teachers, teachers and standard 8 pupils. The researcher administered the questionnaires personally after piloting. The instruments were piloted in two primary schools to test degree of their reliability using test re-test method. The two primary schools used in the piloting were not included in the actual study. After the quantitative data was collected, it was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented in tables. The following were the findings of the study: There are parental roles which affect the academic performance of pupils. Also, economic factors and cultural practices among parents adversely affect academic performance. Parental back ground also affects pupils’ academic performance. In conclusion, parental roles like meeting attendance, disciplining pupils, control of absenteeism, cultivation of respect for teachers and parents being role models have not been played well by parents. These affect academic performance of pupils. Economic factors like ability to pay fees, ability to supplement reading materials by parents, presence of child labour at home and provision of basic needs to pupils affect academic performance. Cultural practices like FGM, early marriages and attitude towards education also affect academic performance. The back ground of parents also affects the academic performance. The following recommendations were made: Parents should always discourage absenteeism of pupils from school, respect for teachers should be cultivated by parents to enhance learning, parents should be educated on the need to create a conducive home environment for their children and pupils should not be abused at home to promote learning