Influence of selected social-economic factors on retention and academic achievement among pupils in public day primary schools in Isiolo county, Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya, retention and academic achievement of children in primary schools has remained a major challenge. There has been low retention rates and low academic achievement in public primary schools in Isiolo County. Empirical data showing the factors influencing retention and academic achievement of pupils in public day primary schools in Isiolo County are unavailable. The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of selected socio-economic factors influencing retention and academic achievement among pupils in public day primary schools in Isiolo County. The objectives of this study were to: determine the influence of household income, establish the influence of education of parents, determine the influence of parental occupation and, establish the influence of family environment on retention and academic achievements of pupils in public day primary schools, in Isiolo County. This study used Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory. This study used a correlation design that adopted both quantitative and qualitative techniques for testing the pupils, teachers and education officers’ questionnaires respectively. The population of the study consisted of 4142 respondents comprising of 546 standards seven teachers, 3594 standard seven pupils and 2 education officers in Isiolo County. The study used both purposive and simple random sampling methods. The sample size was 242 pupils, 110 teachers and 2 education officers, totalling to 354. The data for this study was collected using questionnaires for teachers and pupils and an informant interview for education officers. Content validity was used to test whether the questionnaires were measuring what they were supposed to measure and were ascertained through the help of the supervisors of this study. Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient was used to compute the reliability. This study used both descriptive – mostly in the likert scale, rating by teachers and pupils on how independent variables were influencing dependent variables and inferential statistics (multiple linear regression) to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics included frequencies, means, and percentages to analyze the data. Inferential statistics was used to infer sampled data from the population before drawing conclusions. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 aided in data analysis. To determine the influence of selected socio-economic factors on retention and academic achievement, the study used multiple linear regressions, which was used to test the hypotheses. From the findings, it was found that environmental factors household income, parental education level and parent occupation has positive significant influence on both retention and academic achievement. The recommendation originating from the findings of the study is that the government should increase the allocation for free primary education to ease economic burdens for the parents, education should be enhanced through the adult and continuing education to enhance their levels of education. There is urgent need to support and provide necessary resources to enhance family structure, parent's attitude and expectation, home environment like family types and language used at home. This can be done through seminars and meetings organized by the school community on the same. The beneficiaries will be pupils in day primary schools in Kenya, Teachers in the public day primary schools will know how to re-organize their lessons in order to help the pupils more, Education officers will be able to know which areas they will put more emphasis in their routine visits to schools, the Non-governmental bodies together with donors will know where to come to help the pupils with financial problems.