Institutional factors influencing implementation of child rights education curriculum in primary schools in Murang’a East District, Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the institutional factors influencing the implementation of child rights education curriculum in primary schools in Murang‟a East District. The study sought to determine the influence of the teacher qualification on the implementation of child rights education, establish the extent to which instructional methods influence implementation of child rights education, establish the influence of evaluation methods on the implementation of child rights education, determine the teachers‟ attitudes on the integration and infusion approach used in relation to the implementation of child rights education and finally to determine the learners‟ attitudes on the integration and infusion approach used in relation to the implementation of child rights education. The study adopted descriptive survey design where the target population was 51 primary school 51 head teachers, 536 teachers of social studies, 2,823 pupils comprising only the class seven pupils in public primary schools in Murang‟a East District and District Quality Assurance and Standards Officer (DQASO). Simple random sampling was used to select the sample which comprised 284 respondents. Data were collected using questionnaire and interview. The response rate was 270 out of 285 respondents making 94.7%.Interview guide was administered to District Quality Assurance and Standard Officer. The study therefore generated both qualitative and quantitative data. For the quantitative data, analysis of the data was done through descriptive statistics by use of frequencies and percentages. The qualitative data was organized into themes corresponding to the study objectives. The findings from the study showed that though quite a number of head teachers and teachers had been trained to implement child rights education there was still an alarming number of those who had not received any training to implement the same and therefore this becomes a hindrance to implementation of child rights education curriculum. From the findings, evaluation was hampered by the absenteeism of the learners and also due to large classes as a result of understaffing in the district. Majority of teachers over used some of the teaching methods and ignored the others thus hindering the implementation of child rights education. In some schools, teachers did not use participatory methods of instruction hence placing learners in the passive role and therefore not fostering effective learning. About the attitude of both the learners and teachers the study found out that though majority of the teachers and learners had positive attitude toward the integration and infusion of children‟s rights in the curriculum, there was still a number of teacher and pupil respondents who had negative attitude toward the same thus hindering implementation of the child rights curriculum. The study recommends the following; The Ministry of Education to carry out refresher training for both the head teachers and teachers in order to help them keep abreast with expectations for desirable child rights education. The Ministry of Education to sensitize teachers to incorporate variety of teaching methods in a lesson to cater for different categories of learners with different abilities.The government through the Ministry of Education to employ more teachers to improve the ratio of teacher to pupils as this has an impact on the mode of assessment and methodologies used by teachers. The school committee and the teachers to combine efforts and generate ways of making the subject of child rights education more enjoyable to learners. The researcher suggested for a similar study to be done in privately owned primary schools and other public schools in rural settings to compare the findings. Similar study to be done in public primary schools on the children with special needs, now that there is a policy on inclusive education.