Selected Social and Economic Factors that Affect Girl Child's Participation in Secondary School Education in Bureti District, Kenya

Abstract

Education is an important aspect for overall development of every person irrespective of gender. In Kenya. the girl child is faced with a number ot challenges in the process of her secondary school education. The problem of low level of participation by the girl child in secondary school education is evident in Bureti District among other areas in the country, leading to diminishing girl child participation in gainful employment and other social and economic activities. This study. carried out in the district, therefore sought to investigate selected social and economic factors that affect the girl child’s participation in secondary school education in Bureti District. The district had 62 secondary schools of which l5 were girls’ schools while 30 were mixed secondary schools and 17 were boys’ schools. The entire district had a total population of 12250 students and 406 teachers. The target populations were 5541 girl students and 62 secondary school teacher counselors in the district. Survey design was used in this study in \vhieh ti sample size ot‘36O girl students and l6 teacher counselors were drawn from l5 girls’ and mixed secondary schools in the district using stratilied sampling technique. Students and teachers’ questionnaires were used to collect the required data from the students and counselor teachers respectively. Research instruments were validated through pilot study and reliability of 0.75 was determined using the Cronbacl1’s alpha procedure. Descriptive statistics; mean. frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the data while Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used for analysis. From the study, it was established that the most common factors that affected girl child participation in secondary school education were parents’ level of income and their stereotype thinking towards girl child education. These have led to a numher of girls dropping out of school. As a recommendation. the government should aid the education ofgirl child in the district through pwvision of bursaries he girl students as effort is also made to ensure that parents’ attitude is 5*. 1 climiged in favour ofgirl child education.