The factors influencing the rate of girl drop out in schools in Igembe South district, Meru county

Abstract

The study sought to find out the causes of school dropout in the Igembe South District of Meru County. The researcher used descriptive survey as the research design and questionnaires were used as the data collection instrument. A total number of two hundred and forty (240) respondents were sampled for the study: One hundred (100) pupils, ninety (90) parents, thirty (30) dropouts and twenty (20) teachers. Parents and dropouts were selected on snowballing sampling technique; teachers were sampled through purposive sampling method; and the simple random sampling method was used to select the pupils. The methods adopted for analyzing the results of the study were simple frequency and percentage tables. It was found from the study that pupils in the Igembe South District perceive the school or learning environment in which they learn as not being conducive or friendly and thereby discourage them from attending school. The findings also revealed that many factors influence school dropout in the Igembe South District prominent among them are: parents not being able to provide pupils’ educational needs, teasing or stigmatization resulting from poor performance, pregnancy on the part of pupils, hunger, and too much punishment by teachers. It was also found from this study that parents and teachers do not play any active roles in ensuring the retention of pupils in school. The findings of this study show that majority of pupils would be influenced to drop out of school due to the teasing or stigma they suffer as a result of disease (HIV/AIDS) of their parents. Based on the results of the study the following recommendations are made; the learning environment should be made conducive to facilitate pupils’ retention in school, teasing and stigmatization of dull students on the part of pupils and teachers must stop, special attention must be given to pupils with special academic needs, provision of guidance and counseling units in the schools ,soft loan to parents to embark on small scale business, those who impregnate school children must be imprisoned,sex education should be encouraged in schools, extension of the school feeding program, provision of free school uniforms and other learning materials, there must be HIV/AIDS sensitization program in the district so as to deal with the stigmatization of the children of HIV/AIDS patients and Seminars and workshops to educate the pupils, parents and the entire community about the dropout menace.