Wastage in primary school education: the case of slum schools in Kibera division, Nairobi
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Date
2011-12-01
Authors
Kimatu, Florence Nzembi
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Abstract
The government of Kenya is committed to the goal of Education for all. However, the problem of wastage in primary school education undermines this achievement. Any factor that interferes with the learning not only undermines the educational goal but also hampers the growth and development of the children. For this reason, there is a need to identify the factors that contribute to wastage in primary schools in Kenya. This problem is more pronounced in the slum areas. Therefore, the task of this study was to investigate the factors, which contribute to wastage in Primary Schools in kibera Langata Division in Nairobi. Kibera is the largest slums in Kenya. and also one of the largest in Africa.
The study focused mainly on pupils, teachers,school environment and the home environment of the pupils in the identified schools. The specific objectives of the study were to find out: The relationship between wastage in education and pupil characteristics, the relationship between wastage in education and teacher characteristics, whether wastage in education was related to school characteristics, and how the home environment was related to wastage in education.
The target population for this study was purposively selected to participate in the study. A total of 240 pupils and 56 teachers were selected from all regions in Kibera slum. While a number of researchers have addressed some of the issues related to wastage, the factors behind wastage in Kibera slum have not been adequately investigated and hence the necessity of this study.
Questionnaires, observation and interview schedules were used in collecting the data. The collected data was analyzed quantitatively using ANOVA. Part of the analysis was processed by the use of content analysis.
Hypotheses tested in the study were either rejected or accepted based on significance level that was fixed at 0.05.
The study revealed that there was a significant relationship between wastage in primary school pupils and pupils' negative attitude towards education and that pupils did not take their studies seriously. Some combined learning with other activities the school environment was also found to be not conducive for learning. The pupils were ill - disciplined. Such pupils kept on dropping out of school while some schoolgirls dropped out because of being sexually harassed by their male schoolmates and some teachers. The home environment was also found to be unfavourable for schooling.
The findings show that a concerted effort is required if the pupil dropout situation is to be reversed. The parents, teachers and government should play a pro-active role in the alleviation of the problems that prevent pupils from completing their primary education.
This thesis is organized in five chapters. Chapter one introduces the statement of the problem while chapter two reviews the relevant literature to the study as well as explaining the theoretical framework of the study. Chapter three deals with methodology for data collection whereas chapter four presents data analysis. Summary of the results conclusion and recommendations are presented in chapter five.
Description
Educational Foundation,106p The LC 145.8.K4K52, 2007.
Keywords
Dropouts, Dropouts--preventation