Influence of children's rights awareness on students' academic performance in public secondary schools in Ugunja sub-county, Kenya.

Abstract

There are many authors who have insisted on the need to increase the level of awareness of children’s rights in the teaching and learning process. Particular stress is made on defining the correlation between educational context and students’ rights awareness. The issue of concern in this research originates from the research question resulting from poor academic performance and continued infringement of student rights in public secondary schools in Ugunja Sub-County. The rationale of the research was to identify whether student in Ugunja Sub-county, Siaya County, were in any way conversant with their rights and if in case they were, how this influenced their academic performance. The objectives of the research were to ascertain the most violated children’s right and its impact on their academic performance, to assess the level of children’s rights knowledge among students and its impact on academic results and to understand how children’s rights awareness could be improved with a focus to better academic performance. The target population of the study included Ugunja Sub-County Director of Education, 25 school principals, 393 teachers, and 15,502 students attending secondary schools within the Sub-County. Limitations of the study included some respondents' reluctance to share information due to fear of job loss and the busy schedules of others. The problem considered in this research is based on the current low academic achievements of students, which is suspected to be as a result of continued abuse of children’s rights in public secondary schools of Ugunja Sub-County. Gaps in this study included the fact that previously related studies failed to address how corporal punishment, bullying, racial discrimination and awareness of children’s right impacted academic performance. The research used Mathew Kramer’s Best Interest theory of a child. Descriptive survey design was used to provide relevant, accurate and detailed information. Slovin’s formula was used to obtain a sample size of 360. Questionnaires and interviews were the research instruments. Data analysis technique involved use of graphs, pie chat, tables and thematic analysis. On ways that could be used to enhance child right awareness for better academic performance, teachers strongly agreed on use of documentaries on child right issues and partnership with NGO’s at 80% and 97% respectively. Up to 36% of teachers strongly supported the use of legal documents while only 16% strongly disagreed. Most teachers, about 70% disagreed with regular featuring stories as a way of promoting child right awareness. 56% of the Principals suggested that it was important for schools to be playing some relevant video clips that are in line with child rights at least once every term in order to boost child right awareness. According to the SCDE, in order to raise awareness of children's rights and improve academic performance at the Ugunja Sub-County Public Secondary Schools that were the subject of the study, teachers were to encourage students to create as many posters as they could and display them across the school grounds.