Abstract:
The Government of Kenya (GoK) initiated Free Primary Education (FPE) programme effective January, 2003. The purpose of FPE was to accelerate the realization of GoK’ s commitment to achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2005 and Education For All (EFA) by 2015. The introduction of FPE increased enrolment by 25% from 5.9 million in 2002 to 7.4 million in 2004.The objectives of the Study were to establish the adequacy of human and physical resources to implement FPE; assess learning outcomes in terms of competency levels; examine the application of knowledge; and measure problem-solving skills. The review of related literature indicated that quality of education is correlated to, but not limited to learner, teacher and schools factors. The pertinent data were obtained from a national stratified random sample of 24,119 pupils in public primary schools in standards 2, 4 and 6, and 985 teachers. A self-administered questionnaire gathered data from the teachers while the learning achievement levels were measured by pupil performance in tailor-made English, Kiswahili, Mathematics and Science tests. The Study results revealed that school factors explained 22.5% of the variation in test scores, followed by teacher and pupil characteristics with 17.4% and 4.6% receptively. The results also revealed that pupils performed better in knowledge items compared to those that measured application and problem solving abilities although overall, the pupils scored less than 50% of the recommended minimum learning achievement.
