School Based Factors Influencing Learners’ Completion in Public Primary Schools in Ndhiwa District, Homa Bay County, Kenya

Abstract

Education is widely recognized as the key to National Development in that an increase to accessibility, retention and completion of quality education is a necessity to socio-economic growth and productivity as well as high quality life. The study sought to investigate factors influencing learners’ completion in public primary schools in Ndhiwa district, Homa-bay County. The specific objectives include to examine the extent to which physical facilities, teaching-learning resources, teachers’ qualification and teacher pupil ratio influence learners’ completion in public primary schools. Descriptive survey design was adopted and a stratified random sampling technique was used for the study since the population was made up of different homogeneous categories. A sample of 32 schools (30%), 32 head teachers and 166 teachers (10%) were selected to participate in the study selected from a target population of 157 public primary schools with a total population of 64929 pupils (29,271 boys and 33,784 girls) and 1,666 teachers (733 males and 433 females) (DEOs office, Ndhiwa district 2016. The research instruments used were questionnaires for head teachers and teachers and focused group discussion guides for pupils. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage and inferential statistics such as chi-square to measure the influence of an independent variable on the dependent variable. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis by summarizing main themes from the focus group discussion. From the findings of the study, it was established that physical facilities like classrooms, library and playgrounds, teacher-learning resources such as text books, computers as well as teachers’ qualification and teacher-pupil ratio influence learners’ completion in public primary schools in Ndhiwa district. Also, it was established that teaching and learning resources were not adequate. The main conclusion was that physical facilities, teaching-learning resources, teachers’ qualification and teachers’ pupil ratio play a great role in influencing the choice of schools by teachers during recruitment and transfers. The study recommends that schools, planners and administrators should equip the schools with adequate physical facilities so as to improve the learners’ completion. Instructional materials and equipment should be improved and made available to the schools and learning materials easily accessed by pupils so as to facilitate the learning, and consequently leaners’ completion. Finally, the future research needs to address causes of the differences in class size in the schools and its relationship to completion.