Influence of socio-economic factors on internal efficiency in the provision of secondary school education in Mukaa district, Kenya

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the influence of socio-economic factors on internal efficiency in the provision of secondary school education in Mukaa district. The objectives guiding the study were; to establish the effect of parents' poverty levels on access to secondary school education, to determine the influence of parental level of education on children participation in secondary education , to establish the extent to which gender preferences contributes to drop outs and access to secondary education, to establish the contribution of household duties and child labour on performance in national examinations, to investigate the contribution of family structure and stability on school absenteeism in secondary schools and to determine the influence of early marriages and sexual harassment on access and participation in secondary school education.

This was a descriptive survey research that targeted 34 secondary schools in the district. All the 224 class teachers and 1583 form four students were targeted. Two schools were randomly selected for the pilot study. All head teachers from 32 schools participated in this study. 32 teachers and 170 students were randomly sampled. The instrument for data collection was the questionnaire. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) program and presented using tables, frequencies, percentages and charts .The analysis revealed several socio-economic factors influencing internal efficiency in the provision of secondary education in Mukaa District. These factors are parental poverty levels, parental level of education, gender preferences, household chores and child labour, family structure and stability and early marriages.

The study found out that, cases of dropouts, absenteeism, repetition and poor academic performance are common in the district. Some of other factors contributing to drop out in the district are distance of school from home, lack of interest in schooling, peer pressure, indiscipline and drug abuse. From the findings of the study, the researcher gave several recommendations that will help to curb the problem and also offered suggestions for further research.

The researcher recommends that the ministry of education in corroboration with other stakeholders should enhance laws that protect girl child, the community need to be sensitized to treat all children equally regardless of gender and the head teachers should be ready to readmit girls who drop out due to early pregnancy. The suggestions for further study include the need to replicate this study in many districts in Kenya, in order to find out whether the socio-economic factors affecting internal efficiency in school are the same and there is need to carry out a study on institutional-based factors that affect internal efficiency in secondary schools.