| dc.description.abstract | Education is a foundation right for every person, a key to other human rights, the heart of
all developments and more production. This explains why many countries all over the
world Kenya included increase budgetary allocations towards education in relation to
other government sectors. There is however continued concern over the number of
students who do not attend classes regularly while some do not complete school and
graduate especially at secondary level. This study was set out to establish the effects of
social economic factors on students' participation in public day secondary school III
Emhakasi District in Nairobi County. The study also sought to examine recommendations
on ways to enhance students' participation in public day secondary schools. From the
literature review a number of studies revealed that the factors affecting students'
participation vary according to social economic, cultural and geographical settings of the
regions. The target population was the class teachers, the students and the parents of the
public day secondary schools in Embakasi District of Nairobi County. The students and
teachers' sample were selected based on streams, gender and class determined by random
sampling. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. Data was analyzed
qualitatively and quantitatively. The analysis of the study revealed that there are socioeconomic
problems affecting students' participation, leading the factors cited as causes of
absenteeism/drop out were: Lack of school fees, Family conflicts such as divorce, poor
grades, teenage pregnancies, domestic chores, taking up jobs to supplement family
income, taking up jobs like matatu toutslhouse helps and lack of money for bus fare.
Majority of the parents were found to have only basic foundation which is secondary
education. These trends were seen to demonstrate a correlation between social economic
factors and students' participation in public day secondary school. This study concluded
that there is need to address the social economic factors affecting students' participation
in order to promote education in Embakasi district. This could be done by awarding of
bursary equally to needy students in high school instead of considering the bright
students only, increasing the number of public boarding schools and stiff penalties on
parents whose children drop out of school to be introduced. Every school to have an
effective guidance and counseling department to assist the learners cope with problems
and parents to understand the needs of students in the public day secondary schools. The
government through different stakeholders should empower parents by provision of
school-feeding programs. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that similar
research could be carried out in other parts of Kenya since different parts of the country
have different characteristics. Further research could also include more research tools
such as document analysis for instance admission registers, class registers and nominal
roles in KCSE examination to enable the researcher to get information on schools
attendance and cases of school dropout. | en |
