An Analysis of Provision of Prevocational Subjects •and Students' Vocational Aspirations in Secondary Schools in Thika District

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to find out the extent to which prevocational curriculum provided to public secondary schools students are focused to meet students' vocational aspirations in Thika District. The study was necessitated by the fact that access to secondary school is on the increase while the number of those who score grade high enough for higher education remain relatively very low in the District. The study adopted a descriptive survey design to enable the researcher obtain relevant data from several public secondary schools in Thika District. The target population was all principals, heads of departments of prevocational subjects, career masters/mistress and all forms three students who take prevocational subjects in 69 Secondary Schools in Thika District. The researcher used both purposive and random sampling method to select public schools- National, Provincial and District schools. The sample size was 14 out of 69 schools in the whole region. This was equivalent to 20% of the secondary schools in the District. Stratified sampling technique was employed to select one National, three Provincial and ten district schools. Purposive sampling technique was used to ensure that four boys only and four girls only schools were among the fourteen secondary schools. Purposive sampling was used to select all principals, head of departments and career masters/mistress in the sampled schools, while simple random sampling was employed to select six students from each of the prevocational subjects in respective schools. The main instruments for data collection were questionnaires with both closed and open ended items administered to 20% of the principals (N=14), career teachers (N=14), head of department (N=14) and 248 students. Data were analysed and presented in form of Descriptive statistics including tables, frequencies, percentage and pie charts. The main finding of the study is that most students highly value the skills they are receiving from the prevocational subjects that have been provided to them even though prevocational subject do not necessarily or directly relate to their vocational aspirations. The researcher therefore, recommended among other things, more initiative from both policy makers and implementers to align prevocational curriculum to students aspirations and to National aspirations enshrined in vision 2030.