Motivation for school attendance in dry conflict prone areas: A case of primary schools in marigat sub - county in Baringo County, Kenya

Abstract

Children are normally expected by the parents, teachers and community at large to be highly motivated to attend school to learn in the company of others. However conflict over limited resources and cultural factors leading to insecurity in pastoral arid and semi-arid areas threatens school attendance. Inadequacy of resources such as water, pasture, food and livestock leads to insecurity which is further worsened by cultural practices such as payment of dowry in form of cattle, initiation and early marriage. The high value placed on livestock especially cattle escalates the threat to school attendance. In spite of these dire situations children still attend school. The central question then is what motivates these children to attend school in the face of conflicts? This study sought to establish the factors the motivating factors for school attendance in Marigat Sub-County regardless of the insecurity. Selected environmental factors were investigated, challenges to school attendance, contribution of role models as well as the rates of school attendance versus enrolment in Marigat Sub-County. This study was guided by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs which is a motivational theory detailing how people achieve their needs in a hierarchical order from physiological, safety, belonging and self esteem to self actualization. Descriptive survey research design was employed. Target population was 22,475 individuals comprised of class five, six, seven and eight primary school pupils. The sample consisted of 255 respondents from 10 primary schools who were selected randomly and purposively to respond to questionnaire and interview item. Content validity of the instruments was obtained by aligning the research objectives with the questionnaire items and the interview questions. Piloting was done in the adjacent Baringo Central Sub-County to check the reliability and validity of the instruments. The obtained data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with the help of computer software namely Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 to arrive at the mean, mode, frequency and percentage distributions which were presented in tables and bar graphs. Results from the study indicate that the leading motivation for school attendance include the desire to read and write, the possibility of getting food at school through School Feeding Program, to benefit from Free Primary Education and avoid insecurity caused by frequent cattle raids among others. However pupils are met with challenges like insecurity and high poverty levels hence they lack basic needs like food, school levies and school uniform. Research findings also indicated that role models: parents, teachers, elder siblings, those members of the community with good jobs and college and university students played a notable role in motivation for school attendance. The findings of the study will go a long way in strengthening motivating factors for school attendance alongside finding strategies to resolve the conflicts. The study recommends that the government should finance and support primary schools through School Feeding Program, supply clean water, fight female genital mutilation and forced marriage. Parents and elder siblings should be advised to be good role models to pupils in order to increase school enrolment and hence improve on school attendance.