Abstract:
There wide gender disparities in education in place
s with high HIV and AIDS prevalence
despite the support of many stakeholders. The study
was to identify the psychosocial
support in the area under study and establish areas
of inadequacies’. The objective of the
study was to establish the influence psychosocial s
upport on education of girls’ infected or
affected by HIV and AIDS. The study was conducted b
etween June 2011 and February 013. The response rate was 98% among the girls whi
le among the teachers it was 99%.
The mixed approach was used in this study. Schools
in the study were categorized into
21 primary schools, eight secondary schools and a s
pecial institution. Girls infected or
affected by HIV and AIDS were purposively sampled w
hile snowballing was used to trace
girls infected or affected school drop-outs. The st
udy sampled 148 teachers, 294 infected
or affected girls in 30 schools sampled and traced
15 girls who had dropped out of the
same schools. Data was collected using questionnair
e, interviews and documents. The
Chi-Square (
χ
2
statistic)
was used to analyze data at the confidence of 0.05.
The study
found out that girls in this area are receiving ins
trumental and informational psychosocial
support while emotional psychosocial support is lac
king. The lack of emotional support is
making girls to engage in relationships that are co
mpromising their education. In the face
of HIV and AIDS psychosocial stressors girls need e
motional support to build resilience
and be able to cope with their school work hence en
hance academic performance
