A study of competational errors made by primary school pupils in Borabu division of Nyamira district Kenya
Résumé
Performance in Mathematics has been the poorest amongst the other subjects at the kenya certificate of primary examination. The poor performance indicates that pupils among other things are not were prepared in mathematics and hence the need to look deeper into the possible problems of failure.
The main aim of the study was to determine and classify the type of computational errors made by standard four, five and six primary school pupils in Borabu Division, Nyamira District.
The study covered five primary schools in Borabu Division, randomly selected. Each of the five schools availed sixty pupils, and each of the standard four, five and six availed twenty pupils. The participants were randomly selected from class registers or lists. The sat for a test containing eighty questions covering the four basic operations. The test was marked and each item analysed in order to discover the errors made and their relative frequency. The errors made by pupils were grouped into ten categories. To facilitate analyse errors made by different standards and schools were compared.
The study revealed that children do make errors. The most frequent errors are grouping, basic fact, random, incomplete procedures and defective procedures. The study also revealed that the number of errors decrease as one moves from one standard to another upwards and that trained teachers pupils who make fewer errors than untrained ones.