Influence of educational extra levies on students participation in day public secondary schools: A case study of Kwanza sub- county, Kenya

Abstract

The Kenya Government offers Free Day Secondary Education(FDSE)but there are families that are unable to send their children to secondary school. The list of that a student has to meet before admission to a secondary school includes items as :school uniform, dictionary, Kamusi Ya Kiswahili, passport size photographs. This is an extra cost for parents and that lowers the participation rate of learners. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of educational extra levies ,based on Human Capital Theory (HCT),on participation in day public secondary schools ,Kwanza Sub-County .The study was guided by the following objectives :to establish tuition levies influencing participation in day public secondary schools ,to determine how revenue from remedial levies influence the supply of learning resources in schools, to establish how lunch levies influence participation and to investigate if school improvement levies influence learners to drop out and engage in child labour in kwanza Sub-County .The study was conducted using the descriptive survey design .The study used simple random sampling .It used questionnaires for teachers ,interview schedules for parents and focus group discussions for learners as tools of data collection .Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis and the results was presented using tables and narrations. The study found that despite day public secondary education being free there were levies that parents meet .For instance remedial teaching ,uniform ,stationary ,levies for school activities ,sports and clubs levies ,development funds, educational tours, examination fees, and salaries. In relation to learning resources ,FDSE was found to contribute to scarcity of resources as they become inadequate ,are delivered late ,government delays release of the funds or the parents simply relax on fees payment believing that the government will meet all costs of learning resources .Consequently students are sent home for the levies ,they skip school ,engage in child labour to pay for the levies .Regarding lunch levies ,majority of schools have a feeding program that is paid for by parents .Lunch levies influence student participation greatly. That was because learners who were unable to afford payments for lunch remained at home. School improvement levies influenced students because they missed learning looking for money. This influenced their performance negatively and in the long run called for extra tuition or private tutoring.