Influence of school levies on students' participation in public secondary schools education in Mirangine District, Kenya

Abstract

The study was informed from the fact that cases of students' poor participation continue being experienced in public secondary schools. This has been blamed on charging of extra levies after the government subsidy. The study adopted descriptive survey design to investigate students' participation. A non probability sampling technique was used to select 8 principals. A random sampling technique was used to select 55 out of 85 teachers, and 80 out of 2400 students, from 8 public secondary schools in Mirangine District.

The data collection instrument was principals', teachers' and students' questionnaire which gave a strong satisfactory reliability coefficient of 0.80 for principals', 0.96 for teachers' and 0.97 for the students' and was analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation coefficient. The study established that: First, charging development fee affected participation of students in public secondary school as most of them left school due to lack of money to pay this fee. Secondly, the students who did not meet lunch program feet were sent home to collect it, this hindered their participation. Thirdly, charging boarding fee affected students' participation in public boarding secondary school. Students who could not pay the levy were sent home, which affected their participation. Lastly, charging of school uniform fee also influenced students' participation.