School factors affecting performance in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education in public primary schools in Yatta Division lower Yatta District, Kitui County

Abstract

In some regions of Kenya, poor performance in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (K.C.P.E.) has been attributed to factors such as, absenteeism of pupils from school, lack of facilities, lack of teacher motivation, understaffing and lack of role models. However these factors differ depending on the critical region under study as well as school. Performance in Yatta Division has been dismal in the past five years. This study therefore endeavored to study the factors that are influencing performance in the schools of Yatta Division. More specifically, the purpose of this study was to analyze school factors impacting on performance in Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) in public primary schools in Yatta Division of Lower Yatta District. This study used a simple random sampling design to sample teachers and pupils in the area of study. The sample size for the schools was 10 out of the 76 schools in the Division, that is 13%. There are a total of about 2500 pupils in the 10 primary schools. Therefore the sample size of the pupils was 250(10%). Since there are about 501 teachers, 50(10"'0) of the teachers in the Division were sampled for the study. The data collected was analyzed using mean, mode or median and presented in bar graphs, tables and pie charts. Most of the school factors considered significantly affected the performance of the pupils. They include number of teachers (p=0.032), number of lessons going unattended, availability of facilities (p=0.427), school attendance (p=0.305) availability of books (p=0.029), enrolment levels (p=0.960) and number of lessons handled by teachers. The study concluded that the factors impacting on the performance of the pupils in the primary schools can be alleviated by ensuring that awareness of the role each stakeholder needs to play in the primary education is made. 'The study\ hence recommends that i) the government through the ministry of education should ensure the necessary facilities are provided to public schools, ii) The government should consider improving the staffing levels in the schools since it adversely affects performance, iii) The study did not look into factors related to classroom instruction and how they affect performance, hence it is recommended that further studies need to be conducted on these factors to describe their interplay with the factors described here to affect performance, iv) The entry behavior was also not considered in this study. Hence there is a need to carry out research to ascertain the role of entry behavior in influencing the performance of the pupils.