QUALITY OF PRE-PRIMARY SCHOOL EDUCATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PRIVATE AND PUBLIC PRE-PRIMARY SCHOOL CENTRES IN NAIROBI CITY COUNTY, KENYA

ABSTRACT

Quality education is paramount for the realization of holistic development of learners. Parents invest a lot in their children‟s education which calls for the provision of quality education. Both public and private sector have to ensure that quality education is provided. The purpose of this study was to compare the quality of pre-primary school education offered by public and private pre-primary schools in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The target population was all public and private pre-primary schools in Nairobi City County. A sample size of 28 0ut of 280 pre-primary school teachers and head teachers were selected randomly. The transformational theory by Freire and Mezirow was used in the study. It is concerned with transformation of learners who are believed to be empty when they come to first contact with school practices. Descriptive research design was used. Questionnairefor the pre-primary teachers and interview schedules for head teachers were used as the research instruments for data collection. The study involved both qualitative and quantitative approaches respectively. Data analysis was done through descriptive statistics to obtain the quantitative data. To pre-test reliability a pilot study was conducted. This was achieved through the aid of SPSS version 20.0. Data presentation was done majorly through tabulation and a bar graph both in frequencies and percentage units. The respondents were selected through stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques to come up with a rich data that was inferred to all the private and public pre-primary schools in Nairobi City County, Kenya. Among the findings of the study were that staffing affects quality of education. Schools that were poorly staffed recorded poor performance compared to the well-staffed pre-schools. Secondly, teachers who were well motivated performed their duties with minimal supervision, thirdly parental participation affected learning. Learners whose parents got involved in their education had good transition rate. Finally the head teachers had a role to play in ensuring that the educational goals are achieved through proper curriculum implementation and school management. The study recommendations included: there should be a need for the policy makers who are majorly the government officials to increase educational funding to pre-primary schools to improve on quality of education; head teachers should try as much as possible to recruit qualified staff for effective curriculum implementation and encourage the stakeholders to motivate the ECDE teachers to increase their efficiency; Parents need to increase their support to schools in procurement and purchase of school facilities (desk, classrooms, land), purchase of instructional materials (books, pens, charts) and hiring of new teachers to improve on quality and finally further research should be conducted on interaction between teachers and pre-primary pupils in the pre-primary schools.