Is Teacher Education level and Experience impetus for student achievement? Evidence from public secondary schools in Kenya

Abstract

This study established whether advanced degrees and years of teaching experience are associated with student science achievement gains in Public Secondary schools in Kenya. In particular, the study differentiated education level into advanced degrees in Science and advanced degrees in any major, and experience into general years of teaching experience and years teaching Science in general and at grade 12. Teaching quality factors drawn from dynamic model of teacher effectiveness were utilized in the model to establish if they mediated the effect of teacher’s education level and experience on student achievement. A sample of 610 respondents was sampled consisting of 570 respondents consisting of 450 students and 120 grade 12 Science teachers was selected from 40 public secondary schools in the county.2-Level Hierarchical linear modelling was used to disentangle variance associated with students nested within classes and teachers nested within four categories of high rank and low rank schools in the County. The study found no variation in teacher qualification ,between high and low ranking secondary schools with respect to education level(X2=0.324; df =2, P=0.065, and experience (X2=0.824, df=3, P=0.066), but only with a small difference in grade 12 experience between low ranked and high ranked schools(X2=0.824, df=3, P=0.046). With regards to proportion of variance due to nested data, 20.8% of variance in student achievement was amongst student while the rest was within classrooms (teachers). With regards to teacher experience, teachers with more than two years of grade 12 experience will improve student scores by 1.15 units while those teachers without such experience will improve scores by 0.83. With regards to education level, a teacher with advanced degree chemistry or education will improve student achievement gains by 0.085 units, while that with no advanced degree in any major will result to only 0.067 unit increase in student chemistry achievement. The study, recommends that the teacher service commission of Kenya acknowledges that advanced degrees currently acquired by teachers have significant effect to student and as such, teachers with such degrees and experience should adequately be remunerated.