Moses Ngware

Do household characteristics matter in schooling decisions in urban Kenya

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine household characteristics and schooling decisions in terms of enrollment and type of school in an urban setting in Nairobi.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a cross‐sectional data set collected in 2005. The sample comprises 7,475 primary school‐aged children. A probit model was estimated to show what influences decisions at household level.Findings – Analysis shows that different household and individual attributes motivate different decisions. A considerable proportion (40 per cent) of children from the poorest quintile attends non‐public schools compared to 34 per cent from the richest quintile. The findings reveal that better‐off households are more represented in the free primary education (FPE) programme. The predicted probability of a decision to attend a public school for a primary school‐age child increases as the household wealth increases.Practical implications – The paper concludes that poorer households are least attending and may be...

An improvement in instructional quality: can evaluation of teaching effectiveness make a difference?

Purpose – To report study findings on teaching effectiveness and feedback mechanisms in Kenyan universities, which can guide management in developing a comprehensive quality control policy.Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted an exploratory descriptive design. Three public and two private universities were randomly selected to participate in the study. A random sampling procedure was also used to select 79 respondents to participate in the research. A questionnaire administered in all participating universities was the main instrument for data collection.Findings – There was no clear university policy on the evaluation of teaching effectiveness, despite its importance in quality control. Student evaluation of teaching effectiveness (SETE) was found to be unreliable, although widely used where evaluation existed, without other evaluation support systems. Feedback from the evaluation, though crucial in professional improvement, was not made available to the respondents.Research limitations/implic...

Quality of Primary Education Inputs in Urban Schools: Evidence From Nairobi

This article examines the quality of primary school inputs in urban settlements with a view to understand how it sheds light on benchmarks of education quality indicators in Kenya. Data from a school survey that involved 83 primary schools collected in 2005 were used. The data set contains information on school quality characteristics of various types of schools in Nairobi. On the basis of the national benchmarks, the quality of education provided in government schools was shown to be “better” with regard to infrastructure, teacher qualifications, and textbook provision than that provided in all the nongovernment-owned schools. However, nongovernment schools have smaller class sizes and lower pupil—teacher ratio (PTR). The bad news is that government schools have large class sizes and higher PTR and hence low levels of teacher—pupil interaction. Nongovernment schools had poor classroom structures and a higher pupil—textbook ratio, particulary private individually owned schools and community-owned schools. It also emerges that although in the government schools, student learning space is constrained by the class size, the student learning space in nongovernment schools is constrained by the classroom size. Meeting quality benchmarks in primary schooling, therefore, remains a challenge among urban populations.

Free primary education still excludes the poorest of the poor in urban Kenya

The Kenyan government introduced free primary education in 2003 in order to universalise access to primary education. Although the policy allows universal coverage, it ought to benefit the poor most as they are the ones who were excluded from the education sector before the policy was introduced. Using household-survey data collected in Nairobi, this contribution assesses the impact of the policy on schooling outcomes of the poor. The findings reveal that the free primary-education policy in Kenya still excludes the poorest of the poor.

Principals' and Students' Perceptions on Parental Contribution to Financial Management in Secondary Schools in Kenya.

Purpose – The management of secondary schools in Kenya has faced a number of challenges over the past few years. These challenges have been manifested in the many ways including lack of financial transparency, which culminate in unaffordable secondary schools fees. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of an investigation into the contribution of parents to the financial management of secondary schools in Kericho district of Kenya.Design/methodology/approach – The study was exploratory in approach with a descriptive survey being used as a method of inquiry. A sample size of 30 (47 percent) was selected from 64 secondary schools in the district. From this sample, proportional sampling was then used to get seven provincial and 23 district schools into the sample. Purposive sampling was used to get the schools from each category and the respondents from each school into the sample. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to solicit information and perceptions from principals and students....

Factors Associated With Low Achievement Among Students From Nairobi’s Urban Informal Neighborhoods

This article contributes new evidence on factors associated with low achievement among pupils in urban informal neighborhoods in Nairobi, Kenya. The authors use three different data sets to examine the effect of residence in particular neighborhoods, pupil gender, primary school type, and household socioeconomic status on pupil achievement in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results for 2005 and 2006. Results suggest that residence in Nairobi’s informal neighborhoods of Korogocho and Viwandani, enrollment in a public school, and one’s gender, if female, are the strongest explanatory variables for low achievement. Policy implications from the study results are discussed.

Free Primary Education and Implementation in Kenya

Free primary education policy has substantially increased school enrollment rates in Sub-Saharan African countries. The success and sustainability depend on teachers’ perception, motivation, and proper implementation of the policy in the classroom. Few studies focus on teachers’ experiences and challenges in the process of implementing the policy. The current study presents theoretical reviews using the “bottom-up,” “top-down,” and incremental policy frameworks. The study used a desk review of the documents from the Ministry of Education and other published materials from an Education Research Program in Kenya. Findings suggest that there is no adequate empirical study to support the views and assertions concerning teachers’ experiences and motivation toward the implementation of free universal primary education policy in Kenya. There is a need for empirical research and programs to understand teachers’ experiences and challenges in translating education policy into practices.

Randomized impact evaluation of education interventions: experiences and lessons from a reading to learn intervention in East Africa

This paper presents the experiences and lessons learnt during the design and implementation of the randomized impact evaluation (IE) of a reading to learn (RtL) intervention in early primary grades. The study was to assess the impact of RtL on literacy and numeracy among pupils in low-performing districts in East Africa. The intervention was designed in a way that in each country one district implemented an intervention package that included teacher training, and teaching and learning materials; while the other district implemented this same package with an additional parental involvement component. Baseline data were collected in mid-2009 in Grades 1 and 2, and in 2010 for the incoming Grade 1. The endline data were collected in mid-2011. A total of 119 treatments and 110 control schools participated in the study. The randomized design provided an opportunity to attribute causality and also qualitatively establish pathways through which the intervention impacted on learning. The paper provides lessons learnt and demonstrates how the challenges faced during the evaluation were addressed. Additionally, the paper shows how IE was utilized to provide robust evidence of what works thus enabling policy-makers to make decisions on sustainability and scale-up of education interventions.

Assessing the impact of free primary education using retrospective and prospective data: lessons from the Nairobi case study

This paper describes the design and methodology used to assess the impact of free primary education (FPE) policy in Nairobi, Kenya. The key outcome of the study was to assess the impact of FPE on schooling outcomes among the urban poor. The study assesses the impact of FPE by examining how two non-comparable groups responded to the introduction of the policy. Retrospective data were collected for 2000–2004, while prospective data has been collected annually since 2005. This household survey has created both cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets. This provided an opportunity to assess factors, other than lack of fees, which associate with school enrolment and retention. The strength of this paper is in demonstrating how survey design can be utilized to assess the impact of a public policy between different population groups. Based on the design and methodology used in this Nairobi case study, the paper provides lessons on how to utilize household surveys to assess policy impacts.

The Role of Classroom Resources and National Educational Context in Student Learning Gains: Comparing Botswana, Kenya, and South Africa

We take an innovative approach to estimating student mathematics learning in the sixth grade of three African countries. The study reinforces the notion that beyond the quality of the teaching process in classrooms, national contextual factors are important in understanding the contribution that schooling makes to student performance. Our approach enhances more typical cross-sectional production function estimates in three ways: (1) to respond to critiques that production function estimates usually do not include classroom processes, we measure both teacher characteristics and teaching process variables and include them in the model; (2) to more clearly identify student learning with schooling processes, we estimate the gain in learning associated with a student’s exposure to teaching characteristics and processes during the sixth-grade academic year in each country; and (3) to begin to address the issue of possible “national institutional factors” influencing student achievement, we use a comparative approach to approximate and initiate discussion of “country fixed effects.”