Fredah, Nyaga Wambui2016-04-062016-04-062015-09http://erepository.mku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/2784This study is meant to investigate some determinant of poor performance in day secondary schools at Kenya certificate of secondary education in day secondary schools in Embu County. The study was carried out in Embu county Eastern province. Related literature on the same from text books, thesis, government reports, schools reports and journals. Data was collected from students, teachers school heads and by direct observation in the county through use of tools like questionnaires, interviews and discussions, piloting was done in sampled day secondary schools and design of study was descriptive survey and stratified sampling used to select participants in data collection depending on the category of the school. Collected data was analyzed using both inferential and descriptive statistics, study revealed that factors such as indiscipline cases, poverty leading to poor fees payments which make many students to be away for most of learning time, cultural beliefs, poor entry behaviour due to low marks at primary level, poorly equipped schools so that learning become minimal in schools, lack of trained teachers, high workloads for teachers leading to poor preparation for lessons, rampant leakages in giant schoolsenBachelor of EducationProject