Kenya National Union of Teachers deputy secretary general Hesbon Ogola has said it is not just a teacher who determines the performance of a learner.
Ogola said there are a lot of environmental factors that determine the performance of a learner.
"There are a lot of environmental factors that affect performance, like water and toilet space. These are things that would attract a child to school. Even food affects the performance of learners," he said.
Ogola spoke on Thursday during the launch of The Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (FLANA) Report 2023 at KICD in Nairobi.
He was responding to a finding in the report that showed some learners in Grade 8 can not comprehend Grade 3 work and stakeholders questioned whether it was the teacher's fault.
Ogola said that environmental factors affect learners' performance.
"The very basic requirements that should be provided by the government and parents at home are the ones that will affect performance," he said.
Ogola said there is a need to avail infrastructure and the learning tools that students need to ensure good performance.
He said stakeholders should also look at the proper training of the teachers who are handling early childhood education and early grades.
Additionally, Ogola said even the higher qualifications of the school managers and teachers do not affect the performance of a learner.
Ogola, however, said teacher shortage is a contributing factor to the poor performance of learners.
"This report is talking about the norms of staffing schools such that maybe we can shift from teacher-pupil ratio to the teacher-class ratio," Ogola said.
He said teacher classroom ratio might work better than teacher to pupil ratio and ensure no learner is untaught.
"If you look at the teacher-class ratio, then it means that every other class in that school will have a teacher and no student will go untaught," Ogola said.
"So the shortage of teachers is a phenomenon that we need to work on for learning to take place in our schools."
Between June and July 2023, Usawa Agenda visited 1,953 villages spread across all counties and interviewed 38,634 household heads reaching 59,201 children.
Usawa Agenda also visited 1,813 primary schools - both public and private and engaged with learners to find out if they were truly learning.
39,298 children aged 6-16 years were assessed in English and numeracy to understand their learning outcomes.
Following the assessments, 18 in 100 class 8 boys did not meet expectations in reading a Grade 3 appropriate English text
16 in 100 class 8 girls did not meet expectations in reading a Grade 3 appropriate English text.
The report also showed that 36 in 100 Grade 6 boys did not meet expectations in reading a Grade 3 appropriate English text.
32 in 100 Grade 6 girls did not meet expectations in reading a Grade 3 appropriate English text.
The report also showed that 33 in 100 children in rural areas and 45 in 100 children aged 10 years in urban areas aged 10 years at least met expectations in both reading a Grade 3 appropriate English text and solving a Grade 3 appropriate numeracy problem.
