Study Reveals Kenyan Teachers Struggle with Numeracy Teaching Skills

A recent study conducted by the Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA), in collaboration with Echidna under the Numeracy for Life in Early Years Education project, has uncovered critical deficiencies in numeracy teaching skills among Kenyan teachers at pre-primary and lower-primary levels.

The assessment, carried out across 15 counties with high gender parity, evaluated both learners and teachers. It revealed that only 10.1% of pre-primary teachers and 22.4% of lower-primary teachers met the benchmark for pedagogical knowledge, defined as achieving at least 75% on the Teacher Proficiency Test.

Teachers also showed limited mastery of numeracy content, with just 28.8% of pre-primary and 52.5% of lower-primary educators meeting the required standard. This indicates a stronger grasp of content than teaching methods but highlights overall weaknesses in both areas.

Key Findings on Learners’ Numeracy Skills

• Pre-primary learners demonstrated solid skills in rote counting, number-quantity relationships, number writing, and simple addition.
• However, challenges were noted in shape recognition, number recognition, and subtraction.
• Lower-primary learners exhibited increasing conceptual and procedural errors from Grade One to Grade Three, including factual mistakes such as incorrect addition.
• Gender parity was observed, with boys and girls performing comparably at the pre-primary level.

Implications and Recommendations

CEMASTEA emphasized that these findings are crucial for teacher training colleges, which prepare educators for foundational levels. The institution has called on principals of these colleges to collaborate closely with CEMASTEA to enhance teacher preparation, focusing on both content mastery and effective pedagogical strategies.

Rahab Chiira, a national trainer representing CEMASTEA, urged teacher educators to leverage the study’s results to improve training curricula. She highlighted ongoing efforts to train tutors in learner-centred, play-based learning and technology integration, recommending that these skills be disseminated widely among student teachers.

The report underscores the urgent need to bridge the gap in numeracy teaching competencies to improve early years education outcomes across Kenya.