Challenges Impacting On Female Students Enrolment And Completion Rates In Public Secondary Schools In Nyamusi Division In Ekerenyo District, Kenya.

 ABSTRACT

The study was an investigation of the factors and challenges that impact on enrolment and completion rates of female students in the district category of secondary schools. This study was carried out in Nyamusi Division of Ekerenyo District, Nyanza province, Kenya. The purpose of the study was to investigate the factors and challenges that lead to poor enrolment and find out why the completion rates are low.

The study was guided by the theoretical framework of the functionalist theory developed by Herber Spenser (1860) and Emile Durkheim (1947).It viewed societies as organisms with structures which consist of interrelated parts. These structures play a functional role to the total whole. A school in this aspect is viewed as a social system and there are structures or persons that play functional roles towards it. Failure to carry out duties leads to the collapse of the whole system. Parents, students, community and the school make up the social system. There are set goals to be attained in a school. Failure to complete the school cycle implies that one party has failed to do the functional role. This leads to wastage.

The instruments for data collection included questionnaires which were administered to the teachers, students and the principals. The interview schedule was administered to the area educational officer. The data collected were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. They were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Frequency distribution tables and percentages were used to present the data. Tables and percentages were used because they were easy to read and interpret.

A sample population consisting of 120 students, 48 teachers, 12 principals and the area DEO was used to investigate the challenges impacting on female students‟ enrolment and completion rates in district secondary schools. Results established that in a class of 45 students, seven students dropped vi

out of school and this rate constituted 16% of annual dropout, girls taking the larger portion than boys. The big percentage implies that by the time students move from form one to form four about 50% of them would have left school. The study also found that most students (54%) leave school in November which is the month most schools close for long December vacation.

There was also a substantial increase in the number of students who left school in the month of February. This is because that was when most schools carry out pregnancy checks on their students. Most students who left then were girls and this in turn resulted in the number of girls leaving school being more than that of boys.

This research found that students who left school behaved in a way that could make their impending action predictable. Most played truant, were rude or uncommunicative. The results revealed that the challenges in Nyamusi division were: lack of school fees, drug abuse, low achievement, indiscipline problems, pregnancy, death of parents/guardians, single parentage, prolonged absenteeism and poverty levels.

It was a recommendation of the study that apart from the Ministry of Education spending more of its resources on bursaries for needy students, teachers, the school surrounding community should be made more responsible for the dropout cases and those who never enroll. The teachers can be in-serviced relatively in ways of confronting the problem and the school surrounding community should be involved in school activities like games so as to create a sense of belonging.