Drug and substance abuse and its effects on learning in secondary schools in Ishiara location, Mbeere North District Embu county, Kenya.

Abstract

The Kenya vision 2030 identified education as a major component of the social pillar of the Kenyan economy. The issue of drugs and substance abuse has been highlighted as one of major obstacle in academic achievement among adolescents who make up the secondary school population.This is because there is belief that the use of drugs and substance affect the brain of the students consequently affecting their thinking capacity negatively. More so the use of drugs affect the social life of students . The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of drugs and substance use on learning in Ishiara location in Embu county .The objectives of the study were to determine effects of drugs on student learning. Explain effects of drugs abuse on student performance and determine ways of controlling student’s access to drugs.The research employed survey design and descriptive survey was appropriate derived from the observations.The target population under study was all the 1800 students in 12 secondary schools and 212 teachers.Stratified sampling method was applied to select a sample of 300 students from 6 schools that were used to draw the representative sample. This study used questionnaires for data collection instrument and data was analyzed using descriptive analysis to establish the effects of drugs and substance on learning in secondary schools. The data was presented in tabular form.