Do entrepreneurial skills acquired from technical subjects help secondary school graduates in self-employment in Kenya?

Abstract

We ran logistic regression on a data from a sample of 186 teachers and 393 secondary school graduates in order to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial skills acquired by graduates from technical subjects taught in secondary schools in Kenya and the graduates’ self-employment. The study was carried out in Mombasa and Bungoma counties with the secondary school graduates of 2009, 2010 and 2011. We find that the odds ratio of a secondary school graduate starting a business from the entrepreneurial skills acquired while at school increase by approximately three times if they acquired business planning skills from the technical subjects. Since each student takes at least one of the 10 technical subjects on offer, we recommend that in the light of these findings, the teaching of technical subjects at secondary school level should be strengthened with more practical work being required of the students to equip them with the necessary skills for further training at tertiary level or the world of work after secondary school.