MST-School of Economics

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This collections contains bibliographic information and abstracts of Master theses and dissertation in the School of Economics held in Kenyatta University Library

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Browsing MST-School of Economics by Author "Chalunda, Linda Kamwenda"

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    Effects of School Feeding Programme on Enrollment and Retention in Primary Schools in Lilongwe, Malawi
    (Kenyatta University, 2015-12) Chalunda, Linda Kamwenda
    School Feeding is one of the supplementary policies in the education sector in Malawi implemented to enhance enrollment and retention in the system. The policy was implemented as one of the initiatives to achieve the Millennium Development Goal which aimed to achieving Universal Primary Education. The number of beneficiary schools of school feeding program has increased from 13 schools in 2004 to 33 in 2011 in Lilongwe district. However it is not clear whether the increase in enrolment and retention is as a result of School Feeding Programme or other interventions by the government. Findings from previous studies have reported mixed results pertaining to the effects of school feeding on enrolment and retention in schools. These studies failed to incorporate the effect of school feeding as there are other variables that lead to the increase in enrolment and retention in schools. The aim of the study was to investigate the difference in enrolment of pupils between primary schools with School Feeding Programme and school's without School Feeding Program in Lilongwe district, to establish the difference in retention of pupils between primary schools with school feeding and schools without school feeding program and to investigate the effects of school feeding on enrolment and retention in the district. To investigate the difference in enrolment and retention between the schools, the study tested independence of the differences between the observed results and expected results in schools implementing School Feeding Programme and schools not implementing School Feeding Programme using the Chi Square. Data on enrolments was obtained from school registers, staff retains and government policy documents. To investigate the effects of school feeding on enrolment and retention in Lilongwe, two models were estimated and the findings show that school feeding programme has an effect on enrolment but no effect on retention of pupils in the sampled primary schools. The variables which were found to be statistically significant in explaining the variations include number of teachers and performance in examinations. The study concludes that School Feeding Programme has a significant effect on enrolment but does not have any effect on retention in primary schools. Therefore the government of Malawi should work towards recruiting more teachers and expanding School Feeding Programme to other schools to attract enrolment. And also, school managers should find ways of improving performance on examinations to improve retention in the government schools. Policies such as the Malawi Integrated In-service Teacher Education Project (MIITEP) are in the right direction