Accessibility of Technical And Vocational Training Among Disabled People: Survey Of TVET Institutions In North Rift Region, Kenya

People with disabilities face particular challenges in education and training. Most of them are deprived of access to basic literacy and numeracy skills. They also face barriers that affect access to Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions some of them arising from the surrounding socio-economic environment and from mainstream TVET institutions. The main purpose of this paper was to assess barriers to accessibility of TVET institutions by disabled people in Kenya. The study was carried out in the North Rift Region of Kenya. The target population of the study consisted of the lectures and students with disabilities in 5 public TVET Institutions. Semi Structured Questionnaires were used as the main instruments for data collection. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics with the aid of SPSS IBM version 20. One of the most striking findings was that disabled students in TVET institutions are discriminated and isolated. Findings also indicated that the disabled students cannot access some of the school buildings; they are also barred from enrolling in TVET due to policies that provide cut off point marks or entry behavior to courses they desire to enroll in. It was also found that teachers had positive attitude toward the disabled students, contrary to the fact that students considered teachers to be unfriendly to them.  Therefore, the paper recommended that skills training and instructional mechanisms must consider specific needs of youth with different types of disabilities before putting them together in regular class. Better coordination between the government and service providers could anticipate and mitigate this barrier. There is also the need for specialized training institutions to be upgraded and modernized, and mainstream training institutions be adjusted to include training of persons with disabilities. Keywords: TVET, Disabled Students, Accessibility, Skills, PW

Relationship between grain yield and quality traits under optimum and low-nitrogen stress environments in tropical maize

Breeding for nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is important to deal with food insecurity and its effect on grain quality, particularly protein. A total of 1679 hybrids were evaluated in 16 different trials for grain yield (GY), grain quality traits (protein, starch and oil content) and kernel weight (KW) under optimum and managed low soil nitrogen fields in Kiboko, Kenya, from 2011 to 2014. The objectives of our study were to understand (i) the effect of low soil N stress on GY and quality traits, (ii) the relationship between GY and quality traits under each soil management condition and (iii) the relationship of traits with low-N versus optimum conditions. From the results, we observed the negative effects of low N on GY, KW and the percentage of protein content, and a positive effect on the percentage of starch content. The correlation between GY and all quality traits was very weak under both soil N conditions. GY had a strong relationship with KW under both optimum and low soil N conditions. Protein and starch content was significantly negative under both optimum and low-N conditions. There was no clear relationship among quality traits under optimum and low N, except for oil content. Therefore, it seems feasible to simultaneously improve GY along with quality traits under both optimum and low-N conditions, except for oil content. However, the negative trend observed between GY (starch) and protein content suggests the need for the regular monitoring of protein and starch content to identify varieties that combine both high GY and acceptable quality. Finally, we recommend further research with a few tropical maize genotypes contrasting for NUE to understand the relationship between the change in grain quality and NUE under low-N conditions