Participatory monitoring and evaluation process, School Environment and Performance of Literacy and Numeracy Educational programme in Public Primary Schools in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Education is an important element in human right, which helps in acquiring knowledge, and skills in developing a person in holistic and integrated way. Kenya has a detailed way of selecting intervention educational projects even though there is still questionable performance of these projects due to low learner’s academic performance. Despite much efforts put by key stakeholders in education to improve learner’s outcomes little has been achieved. This is through allocating enough finances so as to improve school facilities, ease access to education, professional teachers and providing learning materials still students’ learning skill performance is low. The purpose of the study is to establish the extent to which participatory Monitoring and Evaluation process, school environment influence the performance of L&N educational programme in public primary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya. The objectives were: to establish the extent to which stakeholders engagement influence the performance of L&N educational programme; to determine how stakeholders capacity building influence performance of L&N educational programme; to examine how data collection influence performance of L&N educational programme; to determine the extent to which data management influence performance of Literacy and numeracy educational programme; to assess how implementing change influence performance of Literacy and numeracy educational programme; to establish how combined PM&E process influence performance of Literacy and numeracy educational programme; to assess the moderating influence of school environment on the relationships between Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation process and performance of Literacy and numeracy educational programme in public primary schools in Nairobi county, Kenya. There were seven hypotheses which were tested. The study was anchored on pragmatism paradigm. Descriptive research survey design and correlation research designs were used in this study. Pilot study was carried out in Kiambu County and the tool was found to be reliable and valid as verified by the supervisors and monitoring and evaluation experts. Further, simple random sampling and purposive sampling technique was adopted for selection of the participants in the study. A sample size of 335 was drawn from a target population of 2053. Hence, 281 questionnaires were returned represented by 86% of the total sample size. Questionnaires were used to collect data from 33 head teachers and 291 grade one to three teachers. Interviews guide were administered to 3 Curriculum Support Officers and 5 Research Triangle Officers. Data was analyzed and presented in tables, frequencies, arithmetic means, and standard deviation and overall composite mean was generated. Data analysis techniques, descriptive statistical and inferential statistics were used in the study. Regression analysis were performed at 5% level of significance. The null hypotheses were all rejected as per the following results: first hypothesis, R2 = 0.480, β= 0.497, t=16.061, p=0.000<0.05; second hypothesis, R2 = 0.456, β= 0.490, t=15.280, p=0.000<0.05; third hypothesis, R2 = 0.434, β= -0.137, t=14.689, p=0.000<0.05; fourth hypothesis, R2 = 0.288, β=0.408, t=10.616, p=0.000<0.05, fifth hypothesis, R2 = 0.337, β=0.445, t=11.917, p=0.000<0.05;sixth hypothesis, R2 = 0.568, F=71.453, p=0.000<0.05; finally, for the seventh hypothesis results for F-value showed that statistical significance at {F (6,269) = 43.481, p=0.000<0.05}. In conclusion the study established that improvement of literacy and numeracy skills wholly depends on involvement of all the stakeholders in education sector, well-structured polices, capacity building, implementing change and conducive school environment for better performance. It was established that, although literacy and numeracy skills are pertinent to schools, teachers were a bit reluctant in embracing the new technology in delivering the content and opted the traditional way of teacher centered methodology. However the pupil’s attitude in embracing the new textbooks had s significant influence on the performance learnt skills. The study recommends that new policies governing the implementation of the programme by the schools and other implementing partners should consider mainstreaming participatory Monitoring and Evaluation process in order to acquire good results. The schools, Research Triangle Institute International, Curriculum Support Officers and all other players in literacy and numeracy educational programme in public primary schools in Nairobi County should review their Monitoring and Evaluation practices based on the study findings that there are no proper trainings for M&E on teachers and other stakeholders. The study is significant since it adds value to project management body of knowledge by giving informative information on policy makers, curriculum developers, projects implementers and monitoring and evaluation processes to review their monitoring and evaluation practices while involve all the stakeholders in programme implementation. It is evident that participatory monitoring and evaluation process is still weak within education sector but it can be realized fully through proper supervision which can lead to an increase in performance of literacy and numeracy educational programme. There is need to improve supervision and implementation of educational intervention projects especially literacy and numeracy. The study recommends for other researchers to carry out the same study in other counties and also in private primary schools.