Teachers poor in class; report

Primary school teachers have a low understanding of the subjects they teach, according to a new report on the quality of education in public schools.

The report shows that what teachers know does not have a correlation with what pupils learn.

The African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), the agency that carried out the research, found that knowledge of the pupils didn’t improve substantially over a long time.

This research improves understanding of underlying factors that have been influencing learning in primary schools in the country, especially with the advent of free education in 2003.

Teachers interviewed were tested on three basic subjects – Maths, science and languages – where they scored an average of 60 per cent with the score ranging from 17 to 94 per cent.

“Given this reality, there is a need to periodically assess the teachers’ level of competence in the subjects they teach,” the report said, adding that the teachers should not be allocated too many subjects at a go.

“While the policy is that a primary school teacher is a master of all subjects, this could compromise the quality of the subject content,” the report says.

A similar written examination was administered to the pupils who scored an average of 47 per cent.

Some 2,437 Standard Six pupils, 211 of their teachers and 72 head teachers from Nairobi, Western, Central, Eastern and the Rift Valley provinces were interviewed.

The report says lessons taught by teachers with low subject knowledge are more likely to focus on low-level cognitive tasks.

The findings tie in with similar ones released earlier by the Kenya Institute of Education showing that teachers were incompetent to teach the current curriculum.