Free but inaccessible primary education: A critique of the pedagogy of English and Mathematics in Lesotho

The teaching and learning process in any educational institution is the central focus not only of parents and students but also of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the community in which the institution is situated. Parents, students and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology attribute success or failure in achieving the set educational and institutional goals to the efficiency or inefficiency of the administration in ensuring that learning and teaching takes place effectively in schools. The head teacher is expected to come up with achievable plans for school development that will create and enhance an environment that is conducive for effective learning and teaching, supply equipment and books required as well as supervise teachers. This study was an investigation of the effects of delayed fees payments on the teaching and learning process factors in public secondary schools in Mbeere District. The study which was based on the systems theory (Owen, 1998) was conducted in Mbeere District, Kenya, using data collected from head teachers from provincial and district secondary s, hools in the district. Employing the cross-sectional research design, appropriate or description and interpretation of existing relationships and comparison of variables (Nkpa, 1997), the study was conducted in 15 out of 41 public secondary schools in the district. Stratified random sampling procedure was used to select six provincial secondary schools and nine district secondary schools. Fifteen (15) head teachers and eighty four (84) heads of department and class teachers responded. Data was collected by use of questionnaires and document analysis. Statistics used included means, percentages and the Chi-square tests at 0.05 level of significance. Results were reported in summaries using frequency distributions, tables and bar charts. The findings showed that there were delays in school fees payments in all the schools and that it had serious effects on the teaching and learning process. There was no significant difference between provincial and district secondary schools in

Effects of delayed fees payments on the teaching and learning process factors in public secondary schools in Mbeere district, Kenya

The local meanings of educating all, and the process of adopting EFA development goals in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia

We are less prone today than we were a few years ago to designate education as the prime mover in development--be the latter political, economic, or “social.” We are finding it both possible and more imperative to explore just how and when education becomes linked into development. No longer does it suffice to conclude that education is “necessary but not sufficient” to generate development and then supply anecdotes about correspondence between general plans and educational plans in this or that set of countries. We have perhaps become even overly cautious in assuming manpower plans to be useful guides for policies to turn out “high-level manpower.” While we may be little more capable than a decade ago to quantify the contribution of education to one or more aspects of development, we see more clearly how education is drawn into many conflicts that are aroused by the drive by national leaders for “modernization.” We observe also the reluctance of local groups or tribes to subordinate passively their own ideas of how to get ahead to some remote official's notions of which peasants must sacrifice how much in order that “the national plan” will be fulfilled. National officials are finding it less easy, however, to praise their local plans in international forums while rejecting the complaints of local citizens whose activities are the substance of development. Dividing my discussion into a half-dozen sections, I will treat education as the topic of central-local relationships and conflicts, as an influence upon the balance of central and local weight in policy decisions, and as an element in many sorts of activities that bring forth latent central-local parallel as well as opposed interests.

L. Gray Cowan

Papers

The cost of learning : the politics of primary education in Kenya