Influence of school feeding programme on pupils participation in primary school education, a case of home grown programme, Ganze Kilifi County Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of school feeding programme on pupils’ participation in primary schools in Ganze, Kilifi County Kenya. This was in the light of the fact that in Ganze sub-county, hundreds of pupils might be missing school due to hunger.Four research objectives were used to guide the study; to assess the influence of school feeding program on pupils' enrollment in public primary schools in Ganze sub-county Kilifi County; to establish the influence of school feeding program on pupils’ academic achievement in public primary schools; to establish whether school feeding program influences pupils’ class attendance in public primary schools and finally to establish the extent to which school feeding program influences retention rates in public primary schools. Target population was all the public primary schools with home grown school feeding program in Ganze sub-county, Kilifi County. Out of the 48 public primary schools, 24 were sampled out where 24 headteachers, 48 teachers and 120 standard seven and eight pupils were sampled through random sampling, purposeful random sampling and stratified random sampling respectively. The study used descriptive survey research design. The research instruments used included: questionnaires and interview schedule. Data from questionnaires were analyzed by help of SPSS programme version 21.0 while that of interview was analyzed according to the themes in the study variables. The study findings showed that home grown school feeding progrmme has positive influence on pupils’ participation in primary education in that there was an increase in enrolment in public primary schools in Ganze sub-county from 45940 pupils in 2014 to 47950 pupils in 2015.It is recommended that school management committee should be involved in the schools feeding programme so that they can sensitize parents on the need to get involved in the programme to avoid any failure incase of funding. It is also recommended that as it has been established that school feeding programme had an effect on pupils’ participation in primary education, the programme should be rolled out to other areas that are faced with pupil participation in schools. In addition it is suggested that a study on the influence of parental participation in school food programme on its success should be conducted.