The Impact of Teacher Quality on Performance of Mathematics in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examinations in Busia Sub County Public Secondary Schools, Busia County Kenya

Abstract

This study aims at establishing the impact of the quality of the teacher to the performance of Mathematics in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examinations in Busia Sub-County public secondary schools of Busia County in the examination years 2016-2019. Six schools were sampled from the 19 public secondary schools in Busia sub-county. This sample is 31.5% of the public secondary schools in the sub- county. In each school 15 students were sampled, 4 teachers and the principal. A total of 90 students, 24 teachers and 6 principals were sampled. The study mainly focused on form IV students. The researcher identified four research objectives to guide the study: determine to what extend which teacher’s qualification and experience influence students’ performance, how teacher lesson planning and preparation contributes to students’ performance, effect of teachers teaching methodologies to student achievement in mathematics, and lastly effective use of assessment and evaluation tools in mathematics to promote students’ good performance in mathematics at KCSE. The study methodology adopted descriptive survey design. The simple random sampling technique was used to select the respondents and questionnaires were designed to collect the relevant data. The collected data was recorded in tables and analyzed using percentages. From the research findings, it was deduced that teachers who employed effective learner teaching methods contributed to better student performance than those teachers who mostly used teacher-centred approaches. It was alos found that teachers with longer teaching experience have greater impact on student achievement in mathematics than teachers with less than five years teaching experience. The study also revealed that teachers with a good rapport and good communication skills contributed to higher student performance. xi The study also showed that although the performance in these schools was generally low, those schools where teachers prepared the lesson notes and worked examples well, related well with the learners, observed the individual differences in learning mathematics by different students’, used relevant teaching resources quite often and gave students plenty of mathematics activities to practice acquisition of mathematics knowledge, skills and concepts showed marginally better performance than the other schools. The research findings would be of great importance to mathematics teachers, students, county education quality assurance officers, college tutors and university lecturers towards improvement of Mathematics performance in our secondary schools.