A Comparison of Information and Communication Technology Application in New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and Non-NEPAD Schools in Kenya

Abstract

To date, less than ten percent of secondary schools in Kenya offer computer studies as a subject in the curriculum despite its perceived role in the nation’s socio-economic development. The few schools that have an Information Communication Technology (ICT) programme limit the number of candidates who take up the subject, considering it a specialty despite its being an essential sub-ject as other compulsory subjects like Mathematics and Languages. The ideal situation would be to have ICT mainstreamed in all school subjects such that it would be integrated in Geography, History, Commerce, Physics, etc. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) pro-gramme was expected to integrate ICT in all subject areas and to empower the school community with ICT skills. The government decided to use six schools in the NEPAD programme instead of expanding the provision of computers to more secondary schools in the country. It appears that the NEPAD schools project was given preference over all the other ICT programmes in the coun-try then. It was therefore necessary to investigate the reasons for the preferential treatment. As a result this study sought to compare ICT application areas in NEPAD and non-NEPAD schools in Kenya in order to gauge the value of the new programme. The study used a combination of de-scriptive survey and ex-post-factor design to compare areas of ICT application in the two catego-ries of schools. The findings indicated a significant difference in ICT application areas in NE-PAD and non-NEPAD schools. Specifically, learners in NEPAD schools (Mean=6.65+0.360) posted a higher mean grade than their non-NEPAD (Mean=5.70+0.297) counterparts in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations. However, the professional qua-lification of teachers in NEPAD and Non-NEPAD schools was not significantly different. The results of the study could provide the ministry of education with documentary evidence of the contributions of the NEPAD program to ICT education and the viability of implementing a simi-lar program in all Kenyan secondary schools, especially through the involvement of the private sector players. It could further contrib-ute to the advancement of knowledge about ICT curriculum development in Kenya