Thesis:

An analysis of free primary education on learners’ participation in pre- primary school: a case of west Nyakach Division, Kisumu county, Kenya

The pre-primary education has become a strategy for protection and drop-out from formal education of children all over the world. ECDE and pre-primary education has been recognized as having significant impact on the performance of children in basic education programmes. The pre- primary has ensured smooth transition to the primary education and laid foundation for lifelong learning. The study analyzed the free primary education on learners’ participation in pre-school in West Nyakach Division, Kisumu County. Specifically the study identified the characteristics of the Free Primary Education on learners participation in Pre-schools, examined the challenges that affect learners participation in pre-school, identified the pre-school teacher teaching styles that influence pupils participation pre-school and examined the strategies adopted by the Government to strengthen learners participation in pre-primary school. The study was guided by classical liberal and Expectancy theory. The Researcher carried out a mixed methodology approach and adopted cross sectional descriptive study design to analyze FPE and learners participation on pre-primary education. Questionnaires and interview schedules instruments were used to collect data from the field. Stratified random sampling was used to select 35 of teachers and purposive sampling was used to select 10 head teachers and 10 BOM members. The research instruments included teacher questionnaires and interviews schedules for the head teachers. The validity of the research instrument was ensured through expert judgments by University lecturers. The questionnaires were subjected to a pre-test before its use in actual data collection. To test the reliability of the instruments, the researcher employed the test-retest and Pearson’s correlation coefficient calculated to establish the extent to which the contents of the questionnaires were consistent. A correlation coefficient of 0.8 was got. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics with the aid of statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) version 22. Qualitative data was presented using thematic analysis. The study established that free primary education was characterized by inadequate school security, inadequate government funds for learning in primary section, low transitional rate in pre-primary school and inadequate government instructional learning/ teaching materials. The challenges facing FPE were: inadequate number of teachers, inadequate sanitation facilities like toilets, inadequate learning equipments for co-curriculum activities, parents’ failure to pay funds promptly, and inadequacy of funds paid by the parents, inadequate school resources like classrooms and inadequate desks and chairs for pupils. The study a l s o found out that the strategies used to address challenges facing FPE were employing more teachers, provision of enough text books, training of teachers, providing adequate facilities providing enough desk, chairs and tables for the pre- primary pupils and providing appropriate playing equipment/ materials and methods of teaching in pre-primary schools were: use of educational charts, small groups of discussion, Oral skills, dramatization, field trips and written tests. The study recommended that The treasury should increase their budgetary allocation on Free primary education to enable the Ministry of education provision of school resources such as text books, chairs, desks and put up enough classrooms, The ministry of education should integrate pre-primary education into Kenyan education system to enable smooth transition from pre-primary education to primary education and Teachers Service Commission should employ more teachers since inadequacy of teachers affected learners participation in pre-primary education.