| dc.description.abstract | This study focused on challenges facing orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in accessing free primary education (FPE) in Embakasi Division of Nairobi. It sought to find out the particular challenges, their impact and ways of averting them, in accessing FPE. The main variable of study was access to FPE and survey design was used in data collection by choosing a sample size of twenty-seven respondents from public primary schools, charitable institutions and government education offices. Of the twenty-seven respondents, fifteen were picked from primary schools, ten from charitable institutions and two from the local education office to ensure reliability.
Questionnaires, interview guides and observation checklists were used to gather data from the respondents. This was necessary for the purpose of comparison to avoid biased and unreliable results. The study was mainly qualitative, however, quantitative techniques were applied to present results where appropriate, using statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) as data analysis tool.
Study findings revealed that the main challenges facing OVC'S in accessing FPE were uniforms and books (general stationery), hunger,discrimination and lack of guidance. From these, uniforms and books accounted for 48.1% of the cases whereas 22.2% indicated discrimination as the main challenge.
It was also evident that, OVC's are not adequately catered for by government programs such as priority measures when providing learning resources according to 51.9% of the interviewed group. Study findings, therefore, recommended that, as a way of addressing the existing challenges, school feeding program should be revived and government legislation put in place to protect OVC'S from exploitation. This could be done through increased funding of activities like the cash transfer program (CTP). The funding can also be utilized to establish new public boarding schools to increase integration and enrollment of all avc categories. | en_US |
