65% OF KENYAN TEACHERS PERFORM POORLY IN THEIR SUBJECT

SIXTY-FIVE per cent of teachers in public schools do not have adequate knowledge of the subjects they teach, a Word Bank report released yesterday shows.

The Survey on the 2012-13 Implementation of Service Delivery Indicators in Education showed that only a third (35 per cent) of public school teachers showed mastery of the curriculum they teach, with seniority and years of training among teachers lacking correlation with better competence.

In private schools, 49 per cent of teachers understand the subjects they teach.

The report also discloses that half of teachers in public schools show up but do not actually go to class to teach.

Rural public schools are the biggest casualties of both classroom absenteeism, at 48.8 per cent, and school absenteeism, at 17.2 per cent, against urban public schools, at 42.6 per cent and 13.7 per cent, respectively.

According to the report, released by the ministry of Education, a public school child receives 1 hour 9 minutes less teaching daily than their private schools counterparts.

The implication is that every term, a child in a public school receives 20 days less of teaching time, with the situation being worsened by teachers’ lack of adequate knowledge in the subjects they teach.

This is despite the fact that 86 per cent of public schools have sufficient light for reading, and the average number of textbooks exceeds Kenya’s target of 3 per pupil, says the survey.

There are large and significant differences between private and public schools, with public school classes almost twice as large, at 37 pupils, than private school classes at 21 pupils.

Crowding is also more severe in urban schools, with average class sizes of 41 compared to rural schools with 36 students per teacher.

The report found there is large variation in the student‐teacher ratio across Kenya, with one teacher handling 50 students or more in 20 per cent of schools.

The research was conducted by the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis and Kimterica, with support from the World Bank and USAID.

The research results deliver a withering verdict on public school tutors, just a day after the 2015 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination results showed private academies outshone public schools.

The overall slump in performance was attributed to teachers’ chronic absenteeism in public schools, with many opting to miss classes on Thursdays and Fridays to attend funerals and other social activities.

The findings show the government has done better on the availability of inputs such as equipment, textbooks, and most types of infrastructure, but fails on provider knowledge and effort, which are relatively weak.

“Significantly, more investment is needed in ‘software’ than ‘hardware’,” the report notes.

The overall objective of the indicators is to gauge the quality of service delivery in primary education to enable the government and service providers to identify gaps and to track progress.