| dc.description.abstract | The education sector in Kenya has undergone a major transformation due to amongst other
factors, changing patterns of curriculum delivery and technological innovations. One of
such initiatives is the IT curriculum implementation to primary schools which is a key
development pillar in line with Vision 2030. The intended introduction of laptops to primary
schools in Kenya; a project embedded in the Jubilee government’s manifesto has faced
various problems. This study sought to assess the factors influencing implementation of the
laptop project in public primary schools in Kenya; a case of Nairobi County. The
independent variables in the study include procurement procedures, financing issues,
teacher’s capacity and power supply. The study assumed that all the respondents are fully
aware of the laptop project and thus provided their honest perceptions. Some of the areas
covered in the literature include the theoretical framework of the study, educational
technology projects, and laptop project in other countries, knowledge gap and the
conceptual framework. The study focused on the diffusion theory by Ryan and Gross which
is a collection of a number of theories. Cross sectional descriptive design was adopted in
this study. The study specifically targeted head teachers and teachers of public primary
schools in Nairobi County as well as the education officials of MOE and KICD. The study
adopted cluster sampling to pick the head teachers and teachers from the constituencies in
Nairobi County. However, simple random sampling was used to select four respondents;
one head teacher and three regular teachers; from every sampled school; giving a total of 76
teachers; while 20% of the officials population from both the MOE and the KICD formed
the sample size 40 officials. The study adopted a semi-structured questionnaire for the
teachers and an interview guide for the officials. The researcher used both qualitative and
quantitative analysis. Frequency distribution tables and percentages were adopted to present
the data. The relationship between the variables was tested using the Pearson’s correlation
technique. From the findings, the researcher thus concluded that procurement procedures,
financial constraints and teacher’s capacity had the major impact on implementation of the
laptop project. Since the value of R square is less than 50%, the researcher deduced that the
proportion of variation associated to the independent variables had a moderate effect. Some
of the factors mentioned by the ministry and KICD officials as hindering the
implementation of the process include political interference, corruption, poor oversight,
procurement bottlenecks, and lack of funds, poverty, laptop security, electricity and rampant
impunity. Out of the listed factors, the main cause of slow implementation of the laptop
project according to most respondents was corruption and rampant impunity. An important
finding is that the explanatory variables in the model result in the direct influence on the
implementation of the school laptop project. Study recommends that: the government of
Kenya strengthens the POA (procurement oversight authority) and KICTB (Kenya ICT
Board) to come up with mitigation measures to control the external factors that interfere
with procurement procedures and processes for the laptop project with a possible measure to
cushion the entire laptop project from international monetary fluctuations; political control
and moderation. | en_US |
