The Determinants of Learning Achievement of Public Primary School Pupils in Kenya

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.