Factors Affecting The Success Of Strengthening Of Mathematics And Science Education Initiative In Secondary Schools In Koibatek Sub – County, Baringo County, Kenya

Strengthening of mathematics and science education initiative was introduced to improve the performance of mathematics and science subjects. Despite the existence of the initiative for the last 13 years in Kenya, performance in these subjectsremains poor. The study therefore aimed at establishing the factors affecting the success of the initiative. The specific objectives were to investigate how the attitude of teachers towards the use of initiative’s teaching approaches affects the success of the initiative. Secondly, determine how the support of the school administration for the use of initiative’s teaching approaches affects the success of the initiative. Thirdly, investigate how the monitoring mechanism of the use of initiative’s teaching approaches affects the success by strengthening of mathematics and science education and lastly determines how students’ attitude affects the success of the initiative. The study will be beneficial to the administration of schools since they will use the findings to find out the extent to which initiative’s teaching approaches is implemented in the classroom and will also inform the district planning committee on the state of affairs in the use of initiative’s teaching approaches in order to justify expenses used in the training of teachers. This research was conducted in Koibatek Sub - County of Baringo County. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The target schools were three girls’ boarding schools, three boys’ boarding schools and four mixed day secondary schools out of a total of 25 schools. From the 10 schools, 10 principals, 20 mathematics and science heads of departments, 35 teachers of mathematics and science and 190 students were sampled to obtain the information out of a target population of 25 principals, 50 heads of departments, 350 teachers of mathematics and science and 5200 students. Stratified and Simple random sampling procedures were adopted to select the sample. Questionnaires were administered to the principals, heads of departments, teachers of mathematics and science and students and interview schedule was administered to the principals. To ensure validity of the instruments, expert opinion was sought. Reliability of the instruments was tested during piloting. After the piloting, the instruments were adjusted accordingly before the actual data collection. Having established validity and reliability of instruments, the researcher adopted self administering and interview data collection procedure to the sampled respondents. After collection, the data were organized to facilitate analysis. The coded data were entered into the computer using the statistical package for social science version 17.0.  Analysis of data was done using descriptive statistics using frequencies, means and percentages. Results were presented in the form of tables and frequencies.

The study established that the attitude of mathematics and science teachers was fairly positive. It also found out that school administration support for mathematics and science subjects was positive. The study also found out that the attitude of students towards mathematics and science was positive. However, the positive attitude of students and mathematics and science teachers and the support of the school administration could not translate to good performance. The study established that monitoring of implementation of the initiative internally by the school administration and externally by the district quality and standards officers was minimal.

From the findings, the researcher recommends that the Teachers Service Commission should employ more teachers of mathematics and science to reduce the workload for the administration of schools so that they may have time to monitor implementation of the initiative. Employment of more of these teachers will also reduce lessons taught per week by mathematics and science teachers so that they may have adequate time to prepare for implementation of initiative’s teaching approaches. Secondly, the Ministry of Education should empower district quality and standards officers financially to monitor implementation of the initiative in schools. The researcher proposes further research to be done on the attendance of Strengthening of mathematics and science education in – service and training by mathematics and science teachers visa viz school performance. Secondly, further research should be done to establish the impact of the in – service and training in Koibatek sub – county in order to justify huge financial spending on the same.