Factors influencing academic performance of students in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in Imenti North district, Kenya
Abstract
This project was on the factors influencing academic performance of students in
the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in Imenti North District. The
district has had a low mean score in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education for
over a period of five years. The purpose of the study was to investigate the factors that
influence academic performance of students in Kenya Certificate of secondary Education.
The objectives of the study were to examine if discipline, the availability of resources,
level of motivation and teaching approaches influences the academic performance of
students in KCSE in Imenti North District. The study sought to answer four research
questions. How do students' discipline, availability of learning resources, level of
students' motivation and teaching approaches influence academic performance of
students in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in Imenti North District? The study
was carried using descriptive survey design. The targeted population was 36. head
teachers, 260 form four teachers and 2115 form four students from the public secondary
schools of Imenti North District. The sample size was 32 schools, 32 head teachers, 252
form four teachers and 322 form four students which were determined using the Krejcie
and Morgan sample size determination table. The questionnaires were administered to the
respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. After
analysis the results were summarized and presented in tables. The results from the data
analysis show that student's discipline influences academic performance of students in
KCSE in Imenti North District. Availability of resources influenced academic
performance of students in KCSE. From the analysis we could not link students'
motivation as a factor that influences academic performance of students in Imenti North
District. Teaching approaches do not influence academic performance of students in
KCSE. From the study findings the recommendations were that discipline is very
significant to the performance of students in KCSE and therefore be emphasized and
strengthened through guidance and counseling programmes in all schools where the
ministry of education could sponsor the counselors. Students should also be taught selfdiscipline
and the school management should not only deal with discipline through
punishments but also guidance and counseling. Schools should provide adequate
resources to in order to facilitate teaching and learning in schools. This should be done as
soon as possible. Education officers in the district should ensure that teachers have well
written notes and other learning resource materials like notes as this has been found to
affect the performance of students fro from further findings. The ministry of education
through the education officers should organize in service courses for teachers from time
to time for professional experiences. Head teachers and entire school management
should be encouraged to offer result based motivation to students in the district as this
had been associated to better results among some schools in Imenti North district. As
much as possible schools in Imenti North district should be equipped with enough books
and well stocked laboratories for effective learning as this had been found to affect the
performance of schools in Imenti North district. The community should put up more
single sex schools as they were few in the district and they performed better than the
many mixed schools that performed poorly. Suggestions for further research were also
made, that a similar study is done in private schools in the same district for comparison
purposes. That a similar study be done in other districts in the country for comparison.
Citation
Masters of Arts in Project Planning and Management, University of Nairobi, 2013Publisher
Universty of Nairobi
Collections
- Faculty of Education (FEd) [5964]