| dc.description.abstract | Although there have been concerted efforts by various stakeholders to enhance girl participation in education, for example bursaries and more so free primary education grants, there are increasing concerns that such policies are not sensitive to performance at Kenya Certificate of Primary Education but only enhancing access or retention. To this end, the study investigated the influence of home-based factors on girls' performance in public primary schools in Enkorika Zone in Kajiado Central District, Kenya. The study objectives were to determine the influence of parents' level of education, economic background, household chores and cultural practices on girls' performance at the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination.
Literature review was based on the study objectives. From the reviewed literature, it is clear that home based factors are major determinants of a girls performance, however some earlier researchers found that the home based factors are not the major determinants of girls' performance in school. The study adopted Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs. Adopting the ex-post facto research design, the study targeted a population consisting of 15 head teachers, 79 class teachers and 1752 female pupils in 15 primary schools.
Using purposive and stratified sampling techniques, the researcher based the study on a sample of all the 15 head teachers, all the 20 standard 8 class teachers and the 150 standard 8 female pupils, yielding a total sampling matrix of 185 subjects. To collect data the researcher used two sets of instruments: Questionnaires for pupils and class teachers while interview guides were used to collect data from the head teachers. The instruments were handed over to the supervisors to establish whether they measured what was intended to measure.
The researcher then revised the instruments accordingly based on the supervisors' recommendations. To access the validity of the instrument a pilot study was done. To ensure reliability of the instrument the researcher employed test retest method. Data analysis was descriptive, analytical and statistical in nature as per study objectives. Qualitative data was subjected to content analysis involving the analysis of emerging themes while percentages were used to analyse quantitative data. The findings were then presented in fonn of frequency tables, cross-tabulations, pie-charts and graphs.
The major findings showed that majority of the parents who discussed performance with their daughters had no formal education. Pastoralism was the major economic activity, majority of the girls spent most of their time doing various household chores with fetching water and cooking. Involving the girls most and various cultural practices adversely affected girls' performance even if economic factors had an influence too.
The researcher recommends that efforts be made to stop retrogressive cultural practices such as FGM, emphasizing on guidance and counselling of pupils/girls, enforcing laws to counter cases of early marriages, enlighten parents or the community on the importance of girl child education and building boarding schools/rescue centres to house the rescued girls. The researcher made suggestions for further research to be conducted in the following areas that is; factors contributing to persistent practices of certain retrogressive cultures despite the existence of campaign and laws against such practices, impact of the emphasis of girls child education on boy child education and why there is increasing concern for education among parents with little or no education compared to those with some level of education. | en_US |
