Publication:

Impacts of Poverty on Education in Ikutha Sub County,Kitui County

In spite of the government’s commitment to provision of universal FPE to all children that have attained school going age, there are segments of the society which continue to face myriad of hurdles in access of and participation in basic education. Key amongst these is children in the Arid and semi arid areas. Though these challenges exist in public primary schools, they are more pronounced in schools located in informal settlements. Due to the complexity of the nature of informal settlements, pupils’ academic performance is faced by multiple challenges. This has led to poor performance in exams with some learners having fallen prey of prostitution, child abuse, crime, child labour among others in away to reduce extreme poverty levels of their households. In so doing Poverty has become a stumbling block towards achievement of educational goals in Kenya. The researcher will therefore look forward to establish positive and negative impacts of poverty on education in Ikutha sub county, Kitui County. Other objectives of the study will include: to establish the mechanisms for the impacts of poverty and their educational outcomes to ongoing school pupils in Ikutha Sub County. The research was based on cultural and structural theoretical frameworks of education. Public primary schools were on the highlight and questionnaires were the main research tool to collect relevant data and information for both positive and negative impacts of poverty on education. Purposive sampling method was used to select schools that represented the actual samples of this research. This helped the researcher to arrive at 120 respondents. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft office excel and later presented in form of tables, bar and column graphs as well as pie charts. The findings was critically analyzed and a summary, conclusion and recommendations were noted and advised accordingly where if properly implemented it will greatly improve towards eradication of poverty and its impacts on education not only to Ikutha sub County but to the entire republic of Kenya. Recommendations made included; The government of Kenya and teachers in poverty stricken areas should capitalize in information children of what they should think of school in a perspective of why pupils go to school; The teachers and parents should inform the pupils when it is time for fun and hard work, aspirations, children awareness of social differences and the effects of early disengagement from school; The cost of schooling in terms of school meals, healthy eating, school uniforms, out of school activities should be well advised to parents in order to avoid disruption of schooling; More funding and scholarship programmes should be sought after especially to the needy but bright children while Future researchers were recommended to cover larger areas in order to know more effects of poverty on education since the researcher only covered 10 schools which could misjudge the findings.