| dc.description.abstract | The project sought to establish the factors influencing student participation in Public secondary schools in Gucha South district. It also had three objectives namely: To establish the home factors that influence participation to secondary education in Gucha South District, to establish the student factors that influence participation to secondary education in Gucha South District and to establish the school factors that influence participation to secondary education in Gucha South District. Establishing these factors were very important in providing information on the level of participation in secondary school education in Gucha south district. Knowing the factors influencing participation in secondary education in Gucha south district was to enable stakeholders in education in Gucha south district to formulate policy for utilization of government resources in secondary schools.
The findings of this study would also be a basis for formulation and re-formulation of policies targeting low participation in school through dropout in Gucha south and Kenya in general. The findings of the study will be equally vital as reference material. The methodology that was used in the proposed study was a descriptive approach. Descriptive design was preferred because it was to allow the researcher to gather information, summarize, present and interpret information for the purpose of clarification. The study population was 1502 form three secondary schools students in the district, categorized into three; Girls boarding, Boys boarding and mixed daylboarding school. A sample of fifteen schools out of a population of forty two was selected. To be able to select the samples, the researcher used proportional stratified random sampling.
There are two educational divisions with a total number of forty two secondary schools. The sampling units was the 15 school heads of the sampled schools, four hundred and fifty (450) form three students, thirty (30) class teachers and thirty (30) class parent representatives. This was to ensure each school is appropriately represented. The sampled random sampling was used. Data in the study was both quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data was analyzed through frequency presentations, means and standard deviation. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis and emerging themes. Data was analyzed using the SPSS and excel software.
The study found that the major factors influencing participation in schools included poverty in the home, lack of study room! place at home, lack of support from parents or siblings, orphan hood and child labor which were home factors ; student factors were students low academic performance, truancy or lack of discipline, absenteeism and ill health while the school factors entailed school's quest for good grades, lack of individualized attention to slow learners, inadequate teaching resources especially trained teaching staff and learners engagement in sugarcane jaggery business. The study recommended that effective measures should be put in place by the government and other stakeholders to ensure that poverty is reduced since the study established that it was the major influence of low participation in school, The teachers and school authorities should also be informed on students' ineffective participation that comes with low school attendance, high dropout, poor academic performance and low involvement in curriculum activities in order to make them adopt necessary measures that will ensure that students participation is improved, The government should consider employing and deploying at least one professionally trained guidance and counseling teacher on full-time basis to each secondary school.
This is based on the fact that the study had shown ineffective guidance and counseling services in schools largely influenced low student participation. Teachers trained to offer such services in the schools appeared either incompetent or merely overwhelmed by other core duties. The study suggested that future researchers should do the same research in other areas so as to compare with the findings of this study, future researchers should also establish the influence of the fast expanding urban centres in the area on students' participation in school and lastly whether dropouts eventually join other schools or quit school forever. | en_US |
