INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL TYPE ON AVAILABILITY AND USE OF HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES IN KENYA

* Florence J. Chelimo 1 , Dr. Emily J Bomett and Mrs. Edna Nyaga. 1. Doctoral student, Maasai Mara University, P.O Box 40580-00100 Nairobi, Kenya. 2. Senior Lecturer, Department of Education Management & Policy Studies, Moi University, P.O Box 390030100 Eldoret, Kenya. 3. Lecturer, Department of Curriculum Instruction and Education Media, Moi University, P.O Box 3900-30100 Eldoret, Kenya. ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History

The purpose of the study was to investigate on the influence of type of school in the use of history and government instructional resources in Kenya a case of secondary schools in Nakuru County. The objectives of study were to; Investigate on the nature of the teachers teaching the subject; ways of obtaining the instructional resources; the difference on the two types of school on the availability and use of instructional resources. This study adopted a survey design in which public and private secondary schools in Nakuru County were involved. The target population was 1153.Stratified sampling was used to categorize schools into public and private. 102 History and Government students and 19 history and government teachers were randomly sampled from the two categories of schools. Data was collected using questionnaires, observation and document analysis. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented using frequency tables, graphs and pie charts. From the study it was found out that, that some teachers in private schools teaching the subject were untrained while some were overloaded with lessons as compared to those in public schools more so public schools had more instructional resources and were used more often than private schools. It was recommended that schools should employ trained teachers on the subject to teach, in-service courses be organized to equip the teachers with more pedagogical skills on use making and use of instructional resources and the Quality Assurance and Standard Officers should ensure proper supervision in schools on use of resources. It is hoped that the findings of this study will form a basis for formulation of policies on strategies for effective use of instructional resources in secondary schools and provide solutions to the challenges being faced.
Instructional resources develops a sense of causal relationship that characterize human development in society, it also helps in making learning permanent through utilization of more than one sensory channel, hence maximum use of all senses. They also add joy and interest to learning thus enabling a learner to pay attention in a class if they write, look, listen and read as they think. It also encourages active learner involvement in a lesson, for it creates a sense of participation and involvement in learning. Learners are also exposed to practical experience where they acquire skills, understand concepts and develop the powers of imagination, observation and reasoning. Chelule (2009) points out that, it is the trainer"s job to undertake all possible efforts to make learning more effective and interesting; this therefore makes it imperative to use instructional resources. Every trainer should use the resources to improve the effectiveness of his/her work. Chelule (ibid) further argues that, however articulate a trainer can be, lack of appropriate instructional resources cannot only hamper attainment of learning objectives but also derail them, by creating confusion, misunderstanding and lack of interest in learning among trainees. Thompson (1962) in Isutsa (1996) points out that, in any instructional process all learners` senses must be catered for using a variety of media. He states that "all man`s knowledge of external world and his relationship to it is obtained through factual auditory, visual, olfactory and proprioceptive senses." In the teaching of History and Government, Kochhar (1991) summarized the value of the use of instructional resources as; it makes learning real, vivid, interesting, enjoyable, enable learners retain information learnt as well as enable learners utilize more than one sense. He contended that, apart from textbook, instruction in History and Government is guided and made more interesting by use of other teaching and learning resources like maps, pictures, charts and many others. So, the teacher who has adequate and relevant teaching and learning materials will be more confident, effective and productive thus be able to implement instruction with ease.
The government of Kenya has since independence initiated several improvements in education system to make education more meaningful to the learners and also meet the nation"s political and economic needs. Like the Revision of 8-4-4 curriculum which included topics with contemporary issues like HIV/AIDS in History and Government. Several development plans have also shown that, Kenya in the last three decades has allocated 30-40 of her national income to education, but 60-70 of these funds had been directed towards payment of teachers` salaries, hence provision of instructional resources was not given the consideration it deserved. This was also evident in MOEST (2005) report, on the Kenya education sector support programme 2005-2010, its summary on the yearly costs for secondary education had less allocation for learning materials than the other allocations.
The Sessional paper no. 55 by KIPPRA 2006, pointed out that, in 2004/5 the government expenditure on secondary education as % of GDP and total education budget was 1.6% and 21.7% respectively. This financing is predominantly recurrent expenditure only 6.5% of this goes to non salary. This therefore shows that, less money was allocated for facilities and resources, so how is the nature of instructional resources in public secondary schools? What about in private schools who receive no grants from the government?
Public schools get government support in different ways while private ones are run by individuals and other organizations. Kamunge report (1988) pointed out that, the government will continue to encourage the development of private schools in order to provide more educational opportunities. But they will ensure they adhere to the regulations laid down by the government for provision of physical facilities, equipments and teachers. It is also necessary that parents who take their children to private schools take greater role in ensuring that the schools provide quality education. KNEC (2008) recommended that, schools should provide adequate reference materials for candidates.

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Koech report (1988), recommended that, the government should encourage establishment of good private educational institutions because they play an important role in the provision of education and training. The Government appreciates the fact that, for the country to achieve a set policy targets in all education subsectors, the private sector must be provided with appropriate incentives and enabling environment to expand the provision of education services (Onsomu et al, 2006). It should however ensure maintenance of acceptable standards, quality and relevance in education and training by requiring those who manage private schools to encourage establishment of Parent Teacher Association for the purpose of ensuring maintenance of high standards of education. Eshiwani (1986) argued that, private schools have more serious problems as some provide below average facilities and teaching. This was corroborated by the findings of Nabwire (1998), who in her study on availability and utilization of non-projected media resources in Geography indicated a noticeable difference between private and public secondary schools, of which she stated that, on average public schools were better endowed and had high incidence of utilization of Geography resources than private schools. It is with this knowledge that the study was undertaken in Nakuru County to find out whether it was similar to private secondary schools in the county.
It is against this background that this study was undertaken to provide detailed analysis on availability and use of instructional resources and the analysis was guided by the following research questions; how are the available instructional resources obtained? Are the available instructional resources being used? Does the school type influence availability and use of instructional resources?
The broad objective therefore, was to investigate the influence of school type on the availability and use of instructional resources in History and Government on selected private and public secondary schools within Nakuru County. It was hoped that, the findings, conclusions and recommendations of this study will go a long way in improving the quality of instruction in the subject in our secondary schools.

Statement of the Problem:-
Education has been defined as the entire process of developing human abilities, potentialities and behaviours (MOEST, 2004). It is an organized and sustained instruction meant to transmit a variety of knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes necessary for life. If this has to be achieved, then instruction ought to be effective and can never be without the use of instructional resources which are vital in any teaching and learning process. For the contribution of a subject in shaping student experiences and awareness of the world in which they live is affected by the manner in which the subject is presented.
The question of instructional resources is important in any subject. A 1990 KIE evaluation report on 8-4-4 system of education noted that, schools lacked adequate learning resources and most teachers were reluctant to use the few available due to lack of competence. Despite attempts by scholars to show the relevance and importance of instructional materials, teachers still waver over their use.
Teaching of History and Government in Kenyan secondary schools has been criticised in regard to the use of instructional resources, like reliance on only one type of resource the textbook, a problem which might have led to unpopularity of the subject in some schools and lack of achievement of subject objectives. If this problem is not addressed, it might lead to a greater problem of students not selecting the subject now that, it is elective after form two. The teacher must make full use of all available instructional resources to facilitate maximum learning by the student, as a creative use of instructional resources increases teacher"s feeling that the students have learnt more and will retain better and this is likely to result to increased performance.
Master plan in education and training 1997-2010 revealed that, even with the Government contribution through cost sharing a number of public schools fail to meet their operations such as salaries for non-teaching staff and learning materials. Moreover there has been a lot of criticism of private schools in provision of teaching and learning resources as Koech report (Republic of Kenya, 1999) pointed out, an outcry on the growing number of private educational institutions that are providing substandard resources for learning. It is therefore evident that, there are inadequate instructional resources in our public and private secondary schools, but the rate of inadequacy may differ with school type thus the need for this study.
Nakuru County has many private and public secondary schools, with this increasing number, quality of services they offer should be looked into, to ensure they also improve on provision of instructional resources. For secondary 653 education is very important as it provides a vital link between basic education and the world of work on one hand and further training on the other (Onsomu et al, 2006).

Purpose of the Study:-
The purpose of the study was to investigate on the influence of school type on the availability and use of History and Government instructional resources in secondary schools.

Objectives of the Study:-
The Objectives of the study were to:  Identify the nature of the teachers teaching History and Government in secondary schools.  Investigate on ways of obtaining instructional resources for History and Government instruction in the secondary schools.  Establish the difference of type of school on the availability and use of History and Government instructional resources.

Significance of the Study:-
The findings of this study forms a basis for feedback on the status of teaching and learning resources in History and Government instruction to the curriculum developers, policy makers, teachers and all those involved in planning educational programmes. Additionally the findings are useful in evaluation of each category of secondary schools as well as reveal more grey areas on instructional resources for further research.

Materials and Methods:-
This study was conducted in Nakuru County, one of the 47 th counties of the republic of Kenya. The research design used in this study was survey. The study aimed at collecting information from respondents on availability and use of History and Government instructional resources and the data was obtained from questionnaires, observation and document analysis. This research design was intended to produce statistical information about aspects of education that interest policy makers and educators like the researcher (Orodho, 2009). The study opted for descriptive survey design because it aimed at describing the nature of instructional resources for History and Government in Nakuru County. Consequently the instruments used to collect data; questionnaires, observation and document analysis are good for survey design.
The target population was 103 History and Government teachers and 1050 History and Government students. Stratified sampling involves dividing the population into homogenous subgroups and taking a simple random sample in each subgroup as each strata share a particular characteristic . It was then used in this study of which the stratum was represented by private and public secondary schools, simple random sampling was then used to get respondents from each stratum.
Reliability is the degree of consistency, that is, the accuracy of estimate of the target attribute (Mertens, 2008, . Content validity was used to validate the instruments of this study during piloting. In order to ensure the reliability of the instruments internal consistency reliability was carried out when piloting the instrument, since it requires only a single administration of the test (Orodho, 2009). A high KR-20 coefficient 0.80 was attained in this study which indicated a homogeneous test. According Too and Kafu (2010) reliability index of 0.50 and above is acceptable. To achieve the objectives, descriptive data analysis was employed whereby frequencies and percentages were calculated on influence of school type on availability and use of History and Government instructional resources in public and private secondary schools. Ngechu (2003) explains that, descriptive statistics includes use of measures of central tendency to describe a sample or a group of individuals.  The data indicated that, a majority of the public schools had four teachers with 45.5 %. Most private schools had two History and Government teachers with 66.7 %. The few teachers in private schools hinder them to effectively prepare for an instruction, since they have more lessons per week thus may not have time to prepare and use instructional resources. Whenever there is a shortage of teachers in some private schools, they take long to replace them meanwhile use teachers trained in other subjects to teach this hinders the effective use of instructional resources, unlike in public schools where they are replaced immediately by TSC or school board.

Results and Discussion
Questionnares on the training of teachers in History and Government was adminstered and below data as shown in figure 1.1 was collected On analysis of the above results, all the public school teachers were trained to teach History and Government while 75 % of the private teachers were trained. Some private schools prefer employing untrained teachers because they are cheap, but in most public schools the Teacher Service Commission (TSC) deploys teachers to them who are trained in the subject they are deployed to teach. The challenge of untrained teachers is they don"t have the skills of availing and preparing relevant instructional resources for teaching thus limits its use especially in private schools.
Data was collected on the number of lessons taken per week as shown in table 1.2

Public School Teachers Trained
Private School Teachers Trained Private School Teachers Given  .0 Students and teachers should be encouraged to prepare learning resources, from the questionnaires administered to them, as the above results show 84.8 % and 87.2 % public and private schools students respectively do not make learning resources. Among the public school teachers 63.6% make their own teaching resources while 66.7% of the private school teachers make their own teaching resources.
The above results indicate that, students rarely make learning resources; this could be because of lack encouragement by their teachers while others could be satisfied with the textbooks. Some teachers may not be making their own resources this could be due to lack of skills, a lot of work or lack of funds to buy the materials. Students from both schools mostly make charts as their learning resources while the teachers mostly make charts and maps. Maps and charts are easy to prepare and materials used are not expensive.
From the data collected in the questionnaires administered to the students on frequency of use of prepared learning resources, among the public school students 42.9% use the resources very often and another 42.9% use them often, while 50% of the private school students use the resources often as shown in table 2.3 below. 100.0 Therefore public students use resources they make more than private students, this shows that private school students make less resources than those of public. It also explains why private students do not make a lot of resources, because even if they make them, they don`t use hence don"t get motivated to prepare. Research was established on how easy to obtain teaching resources and the results are shown in table 2.4 below Most teachers from public schools pointed out that, they obtain teaching resources for History and Government in the school easily compared to teachers in the private schools. In private schools, fees is the main source of funds but in public schools there are various sources of funds hence easy to acquire resources. In private schools the head teachers are the employers and so most teachers avoid closer interaction with them thus cannot follow up on need of teaching resources unlike in public schools where teachers are more free with their head teachers thus can follow up on facilities they need like instructional resources.
Public schools had more streams than private schools, this contributed to a high number of students in public schools taking History and Government. This therefore influenced the type of resources used, as class size influences the selection of the resource. This high number of students made the teachers to mainly use textbooks. Factors like spacing also influence the selection of instructional resource.
Public schools receive funds from the government, thus were able to avail more resources than private schools who received no funds from the government but mainly relied on schools fees to meet all the school expenses, therefore allocated a smaller percentage of funds to instructional resources From the instruments administered to teachers on use of teaching resources below results were collected as shown in table 2.5 and 2.6.  Res. 4(11), 650-663 658 The public school teachers with 50% strongly agreed that instructional materials are the best in teaching, 54.5% agreed that they usually achieve lesson objectives without them, another 54.5% disagreed that teaching using instructional resources don't make any difference, using the resources drags the syllabus so you can't finish on time and that they have enough experience so they don't need the materials. Some teachers agreed that, they don't use instructional resources because it is for the teachers on practice.  Among the private school teachers, 50% strongly agreed that instructional materials are the best in teaching, 80% disagreed that using the resources drags the syllabus so they can't finish on time and instructional resources are for the teachers in practice while all teachers strongly disagreed that training they received is not adequate to enable them use variety of resources.

Reasons for the Difference in the Two Categories of Schools:-
Respondents indicated on the type of school attended as shown in table3.1 below 659 100.0 Among the public and private school student"s respondents, 89.4% and 85.4% respectively have never attended both public and private secondary school within Nakuru County. Those who have, 80% of the public and 57.1% of the private pointed out that, they used the instructional resources in public more than private. Public schools are more endowed with resources because they don`t only rely on school fees as the only source of income like private schools.
Reasons for the difference in the two categories of schools were given as shown in figure 3.1 below The public and private school teachers who said yes gave their reasons of usage as; there is a wide variety of resources with a representation of 75% and 25% respectively. Questionnaires administered to teachers teaching both schools gave the following results on the difference between the two schools as shown in  100.0 Among the teachers respondents, 63.6% from public school and 75% from private school have never taught in both public and private schools. All the public school teachers who had taught in both schools noted a difference on availability and use of instructional resources while the private school teachers indicated no difference. The difference noted by public school teachers was that, private schools had fewer resources. From the observation checklist the researcher also noticed that public schools had more instructional resources than private The level of inservice training for teachers were also established as shown in figure 3.2 below Majority of the public school teachers with 54.5% have never attended a History and Government in-service course training since they began teaching History and Government in their schools while all private school teachers have never attended any in-service course training. Public schools are better in organizing for in -service courses for their teachers unlike private schools who are reluctant to. Some teachers who teach History and Government in private schools are not trained to teach the subject therefore cannot attend the in-service course. In-service Course was rated as below by the teachers  100.0 Among the public and private schools teachers 80% and 66.7% respectively pointed out that in-service course was very useful in relation to teaching History and Government. Teachers in both schools acknowledge the importance of in-service courses

Conclusions:-
School type influenced both availability and use of instructional resources, this was because; the two categories of schools were funded and managed differently. Public schools which were funded by the government had more funds to acquire resources if not directly supplied by the Government, therefore had more resources. Private schools relied on school fees to pay salaries and provision of material resources; therefore they couldn"t manage to supply all the resources.
As far as usage was concerned, resources for History and Government were found to be used more in public schools than private ones. This could be due to its availability and variety, also the public teachers attended inservice courses, where they were equipped with skills of handling instructional resources. Private schools at times employ untrained teachers to teach History and Government; therefore have no competence in handling instructional resources even with the available resources.
Therefore, there was a big difference on availability and use of History and Government instructional resources between public and private schools, with Public schools being better than private schools.
Recommendations:-1. Effective Supervision by Quality Assurance and Standard Officers. The Quality Assurance and Standard Officers should carry out regular inspection of the private and public schools to check whether the recommended instructional resources are adequate and if they are being used. 2. In-service for Teachers. History and Government teachers are advised to always attend workshops, seminars, vocational courses to make them be abreast of the current development in the subject as well as refresh them. Regular in-service courses should therefore be organized for them since teacher qualification is a significant quality determinant of perfomance in the schools. 3. Employ trained teachers to teach the subject. Schools especially private ones should always employ teachers to teach the subjects they are trained on.