Factors influencing pupil performance in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education among the slum Public primary Schools in Makadara sub-county, Nairobi county, Kenya

Abstract

Primary education is a major foundation for social-economic and political development of a nation. It is in recognizant of this that governments work hard to make sure every pupil get quality primary education. However, despite the efforts poor academic performance especially among pupils in slums compared to pupils in other area is an issue that needs to be addressed. It is for this reason this study was carried out to investigate factors influencing pupil performance in KCPE among the slum public primary schools in Makadara sub-county in Nairobi County. The specific objective informing this study were; to establish the influence of pupils‟ discipline, role of pupils motivation to learning, effects of parents income and influence of parental participation in pupils learning on KCPE performance among the slums public primary schools in Makadara sub-county. The study adopted descriptive survey design. Target population in this study was the 15 public primary schools consisting of 2,801 pupils and 220 teachers located in slums in Makadara. Pupils‟ respondents were chosen using stratified random sampling technique. While teachers were selected using simple random sampling procedure. Teachers and pupils‟ questionnaires consisting of closed and open-ended questions were used to collect the data. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive analysis by using the Statistical Package for Social Scientist computer software. While qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis where responses were grouped into themes based on objectives of the study. The findings were grouped thematically as per the study objective. The studies revealed that majority of the students were indiscipline. This was due to the inability of the teachers to enforce discipline and poor parentage. Pupils are motivated by a variety of factors to learn. Some of these factors include feeding programme at school, varied teaching and learning methods used by teachers, friendly atmosphere given by teachers which lack to most at home, poverty, desire to emulate eminent people successful through education, sponsorship and awarding of reward to top performers. It was further revealed that most parents live below poverty line and some are unemployed. Those who work are casual workers and runs small scale business such as „mama mboga‟. Therefore, majority of parents are not capable of providing learning resources required and some do not want their pupil to proceed in education past primary since it will strain their little resources. Finally, it was revealed that majority of parent do not participate their children learning activities. However, parents who were involved in their children learning activities their pupils had good performance than the others. The researcher recommends that school administration should support their teachers to attend workshops on discipline in order to enforce discipline effectively. Moreover, all the education stakeholders should work to ensure parent are involved in their children learning activities.