Value Addition on Learners’ Talents by Public National, Extra County, County and Sub- County Secondary Schools in Nandi County

Abstract

Education processes should lead to the cumulative acquisition of knowledge, skills and values needed for holistic development. However, the current assessment practices in the Kenyan education system focus on the cognitive part of learning at the expense of the affective and psychomotor domains. Therefore, the learners’ assessment should use approaches that assess value addition to the critical attributes of holistic development. This study examined the value addition of talents by different categories of public secondary schools in Nandi County. The study adopted a mixed research design that used questionnaires and document analysis to collect information from school principals and four students. The study’s target population was 192 secondary schools, 192 Principals and 10,499 students. The respondents were stratified into National, Extra- County, County, and Sub- County Schools. The study used proportionate stratified and purposive sampling to select respondents who included 144 principals from 2 National schools, 4 Extra County schools, 26 County schools, and 112 Sub-County schools. Wilcoxon signed-rank test determined the valueadded on talents. All the categories of schools added value to volleyball, basketball, athletics, music and drama (P < .000). County schools added value to Netball, Extra County did not add value to netball and racket games, and County did not add value to swimming and Sub-County did not add value on swimming and netball. The study recommended that the Ministry of Education should ensure talent development offices in every school are headed by a trained person with the necessary skills to help learners identify and nurture their talents.