Influence of Entrepreneurship Training on Performance of Youth Owned Small and Medium Enterprises in Maara SubCounty, Kenya.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the challenge of unemployment among the youth in Kenya and to examine how curriculum can be re-loaded to make it more appropriate in addressing youth unemployment taking into account dominant activities in society and needs of learners. Information was captured through document analysis. This helped to gather data on global issues of youth unemployment, trends of youth unemployment, government strategies in alleviating youth unemployment in Kenya, the role of education and training, the 8-4-4 system of education in Kenya; its rationale and challenges, the role of curriculum in addressing unemployment with reference to Life Skills, Entrepreneurship education and Vocational and Technical education.. Issues identified as affecting education in Kenya relate to: policy and framework formulation, relevance and content delivery, lack of flexibility to adapt to changing social - economic needs, monitoring and evaluation. Reference has been made to Tyler model of curriculum design and development as a starting point in designing more appropriate curriculum to address the challenge of youth unemployment It was recommend that: government should develop policy frameworks to coordinate education and training with emphasis on learner-centred curriculum design, integration of entrepreneurship component in curriculum to complete the traditional education, the need to engage with “Dual” training and work – experience programmes to relate theory to practice and overall improvement of monitoring and assessment of curriculum implementation at all levels of education and training.