Parental Determinants Of Academic Performance Of Learners In Public Daysecondary Schools In Imenti North Sub-County, Meru County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Academic performance in schools has remained low in Kenya national examinations for many years. Year after year Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results fail to reflect the actual ability of students. There has been an increase in the number of day schools in Imenti North Sub-County in Meru County. This increase has brought about positive and negative academic results. Day schools have in past years recorded decline in the national examinations and this has raised concerns amongst the many education stakeholders. The major cause of these poor results can be attributed to parents and guardians. This study aimed at investigating the parental factors that influence performance in day secondary schools in Imenti North Sub-County. The rationale of this study focused the education gap experienced in day schools due to parental related factors and analyze how each of the aspects affecting the results could be approached. Questionnaires were distributed to parents, students, teachers, and head teachers to help gather the relevant data. The total number of people who were given the questionnaires was398 individuals. Out of the total respondents, the researcher piloted two questionnaires to ensure reliability of the collected data. The research design used was both descriptive and relational to help gather independent variables and relate them to the dependent variables. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze the data. At the end there was a summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations to guide on any future step(s) to be taken in ensuring satisfactory performance and proper parental input. Parental involvement in students’ education, social-economic status (incomes and occupation), parental level of education, special characteristics and parent-teacher relationship were all found to influence students’ academic performance in Imenti North Sub-County but in different proportions. This research proposes that parents should engage in their children’s learning activities, incomes of the people should be upgraded by the government, parents should be regularly trained to improve their literacy and the relationship between teachers and parents should also be improved for better performance.