Factors affecting children’s transition from pre-primary to class one in primary schools of soy division, Eldoret west district

Abstract

The start of primary schooling has been perceived as one of the most important transitions in a child's life and also a heed to the UN declaration that all children had a right to education. However, this has not worked well in Soy division of Eldoret West District. The purpose of this study was to investigate factors affecting children’s transition from Pre-primary to Class 1 the area. The study addressed the following specific research objectives that regard children’s transition from Pre-primary to Class 1: to find out the perceived roles of parents, to determine teachers’ involvement in handling children’s transition, to establish the roles played by the school administration, to establish the extent of community involvement and to determine effects of availability and appropriateness of physical facilities. The study was guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory (1979) which has it that children’s transition from one class level to another is dependent upon certain factors found within their environment. Descriptive research design was adopted in the study and this entailed the predictions and narrations of facts and characteristics concerning individuals or situations. Soy Division has 73 public and 47 private primary schools with Pre-primary schools attached to them. Stratified and random sampling techniques were used to get a representation of public and private schools. Basing on the thirty percent [30%] requirement, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were used to obtain a sample size of 22 public schools and 14 private schools. Purposive sampling was used to select one head-teacher and PTA chairperson finally, random sampling technique was used to select, one Pre-primary school teacher and one Class 1 teacher from each of the selected schools. The research tools that were used were questionnaires for the class 1 and Pre-primary teachers and the structured interview schedules for the PTA chair-persons and the head-teachers. Finally, document analysis was used to check whether the professional records available in the sampled schools met the objectives of the study. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the collected data. The findings showed that the school administration played its roles well but lacked the organization of graduation days for the children completing the Pre-primary school level. There were some disparities in the provision of furniture, teaching approaches used and the community support rendered to the two class levels. The study farther showed that, pre-primary and primary schools did not share play materials. It was therefore recommended that, the Ministry of Education should provide more funds for community and parent mobilization and also establishment of enough physical facilities in Pre primary schools. Together with the later, teachers in the lower primary needed refresher courses to enable them understand the strategies appropriate for enhancing a smooth transition of children from pre-primary to class 1