| dc.description.abstract | Currently, there is a great concern over the alarming cases of drugs and substance
abuse, adolescent pregnancies, poor academic performance, truancy, chronic
absenteeism, school drop outs; HIV and AIDS prevalence, jiggers’ manifestations and
early marriages. This prevails among pupils in primary schools especially in class eight.
Therefore, this calls for dire need for investigation into the effective implementation of
LSC in public primary schools in Murang’a East Sub-County in Murang’a County.
LSC is aimed at equipping learners with psychological competencies that would help
them make formal decisions, solve problems, think creatively and critically,
communicate effectively and build healthy relationships. The objectives of the study
was to establish the extent to which life skills curriculum resources are utilized,
determine the appropriateness of approaches used in teaching life skills curriculum,
establish the extent to which curriculum objectives have been attained examine the
extent to which school environment affects teaching/learning of life skills curriculum in
public primary schools in Murang’a East Sub-County. The study adopted descriptive
survey design and stratified random sampling. Data were collected using questionnaires
and interview schedules. The instruments were piloted in at least ten schools in the
same Sub-County which were not included in the final study sample. The target
population was the public primary schools, their head teachers, teachers and pupils. The
sample size was 10 schools, 10 head teachers, 40 teachers and 240 learners. Reliability
of the instrument was determined using test-retest technique. Data was analyzed both
qualitatively and quantitatively using simple statistics such as frequency and
percentages. The findings of the study indicated that LSC programme was not
implemented uniformly in public primary schools in Murang’a East Sub-County. This
is due to the fact that most schools had no LSC syllabus, textbooks and other necessary
teaching materials. It was recommended that head teachers should ensure that LSC
syllabus, textbooks and other teaching materials should be made available. This should
be as per the guidelines made by MoEST and Kenya Institute of Curriculum
Development. When all these teaching and learning materials are provided, there will
be minimal cases of HIV and AIDS prevalence, jiggers’ manifestation, early marriages,
truancy and other vices among learners. The study also found that implementation of
LSC was influenced by lack of qualified teachers and inadequate time allocation.
Recommendations were made that LSC teachers should be adequately trained on how
to implement LSC. They should also be given adequate time as one lesson per week is
not sufficient. When LSC is given more attention and more time, there will be changes
in behavior among learners hence improved performance. Teaching strategies such as
discussion, storytelling, games, question and answer, case study, poems and songs were
inadequately used in the teaching of LSC. It was recommended that regular workshops
and seminars should be conducted to equip LSC teachers with necessary skills and
knowledge on how to implement LSC. When LSC teachers are well equipped, with
LSC skills, they are in a better position of imparting LSC values and attitudes hence
curbing undesirable behaviours among learners. Both teachers and pupils emphasized
that LSC should be examinable and seminars be conducted oftenly. Recommendations
were made to head teachers to ensure that they implement the policies according to
MoEST guidelines. MoEST should ensure that there is monitoring and evaluation of
LSC. Future researchers should conduct research on impact of LSC implementation in
Murang’a East Sub-County | en_US |
