The Perception of Society towards Girl-Child Education in Kenya: A Case of Secondary Schools in Ainabkoi Division of Uasin Gishu District.

Abstract

The purpose of‘ this study was to find out the perception of society towards girl —child education in secondary schools of Ainabkoi Division of Uasln Gishu District. The study was a survey of six mixed schools and one girls‘ only school sampled from a total of thirteen secondary schools in Ainabkoi Division. Convenient sampling technique was used to select the schools. The main instruments used to collect data were questionnaires and interview schedules. Teachers, students and parents whose daughters were either in secondary schools or had dropped out of secondary school provided data. Collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages. This was done with the help of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SP-SS) programme. The findings revealed that majority of the parents preferred investing in the education of their sense to that of their daughters. In case of limited resources, most of them would rather take their sons to school first. The study also established that the major causes of dropout from school among girls were adolescent pregnancies, poor academic performance, lack of encouragement from parents while in school, poor parents investing their limited resources in the education of their sons, parental negative attitude towards girls’ education and lack of school fees. The study concluded that majority of the parents had a negative attitude towards the education of girls. However, most of the students had a positive attitude. Arising from these conclusions, the study recommended that awareness campaigns on the importance of education and especially that of girls by teachers, social workers and civic leaders in the study area should be intensified in order to change the prevailing negative attitude among the parents. It also recommended that girls who become pregnant while in school should be guided to rejoin the mainstream and that guidance and counselling in schools by teachers and female role models should be intensified. This will help to change the prevailing negative attitude towards girls’ education by some students.