| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to investigate the parents' characteristics and their effects on retention of girls in Early childhood Development centres in Tarbaj Division, Wajir East District. The study adopted expost facto design. All the Early childhood development teachers, the assistant chiefs and the zonal quality assurance standards officer were included in the study. Simple random sampling was used to select parents who retained their daughters in school and convenience sampling was used to select parents and their daughters who were not retained in school.
The study used questionnaires, focused group discussions, interview schedules, and documentary analysis forms for data collection. Data was analyzed and presented in form of tables, frequencies and percentages. Findings revealed that parents who were educated valued and encouraged their daughters to continue with Preschool and lower primary education. The main economic activity of parents whose daughters had dropped out of school was nomadic pastoralist. Poverty was a major hindrance to girls' retention in schools. Parents who had many children in the family opted to withdraw their daughters from schools in favour of boys and that 55% (n=lO) of the parents who did not retain their daughters in schools were in single parent families.
In addition parents who retained their daughters in schools were in joined married families. The study concluded that illiterate parents' and those in single family structure denied girls their right to education. Parents who could not afford withdrew girls from schools. Parents' who hold negative attitudes towards girls' education discriminated against the girls. The researcher recommended that the government should give parents education on the importance of retention of girls in school and provide adequate mobile schools in Tarbaj division to enhance retention of girls.
The government should also give financial support to the needy girls and programmes of adult education by government to be rolled out in Wajir District to aid in enhancing attitudinal change among illiterate and ignorant parents in favour of girl child education. The researcher suggested that a similar study be done in a wider area say, a province for the generalization of the findings. A similar study could also be carried out in another district with similar characteristics with Wajir to compare findings. | en_US |
