Determinants of child friendly school programme implementation in public primary schools in Kenya: a case study of Nairobi Primary School

Abstract

The Child Friendly School concept addresses the rights of every child to education. It also addresses the learning needs of every child regardless of their vulnerabilities. It focuses on the teacher by equipping himlher with a positive attitude and concern to develop the salient abilities/talent in the child. The general objective of this study was to find out the determinants of Child Friendly School programme implementation in public primary schools in Kenya: a case study of Nairobi Primary School.

The specific objectives were to establish the effect of school policies and administrative support towards implementing a Child Friendly School programme, to assess the school environment influence in the implementation of a Child Friendly School programme, to determine the teachers preparedness in implementing a Child Friendly School programme in Nairobi Primary School and to propose ways for implementation of Child Friendly School programme in Nairobi Primary School. The study was a case study. The sample sizes of this study were 18 teachers, 80 pupils and a head teacher.

This gave a sample size of 90 respondents. This study utilized questionnaires for the teachers. Key informants were used on the subordinate staff. Observation was done by the researcher, a focus group discussion was done on the head teacher and the interview schedule for the teachers and pupils was administered to collect data. Reliability of the instrument was donethrough calculating the Pearson's product moment's correlation. The validity was done by conducting a pilot study on 2 schools that were not included in the actual study. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to analyze data.

The Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) software package was utilized in analyzing the data. The data was presented in frequency tables. The study was intended to benefit the policy makers in the Ministry of Education, academic scholars, researchers and pupils. The findings showed th~tt Nairobi Primary School is not gender sensitive in staffing policies. The study also concluded that there is no conduction of regular campaigns to encourage parents to enroll their inclusive learners' This affects the implementation of child friendly school programme.