Determinants of Girl Child Performance in Selected Primary Schools in Soi Division, Mogotio District. Kenya

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to investigate the determinants of girl child performance in selected primary schools in Soi division, Mogotio district, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the factors affecting girl child education in regards to accessibility, income of parent’s and parental attitudes towards girl’s education. The study used descriptive survey design and the instruments of data collection were questionnaires to the respondents who included teachers, pupils and administrators and a total of 229 who were selected using stratified random sampling by grouping schools into urban and rural participated in the study. Findings indicate that due to long distances girls miss classes, drop out of school, perform poorly and some do not enroll in school. The study found out that due to lack of fees girls miss classes perform poorly drop out and some fail to enroll in school. Early marriages, low enrollment and poor performance were the results of parental attitudes towards girl’s education. The study recommended that schools that are near homes more especially in the rural areas should be constructed to solve the problem of long distances to school. The community can be taught survival skills like running small scale businesses, maintaining water harvesting activities and having small kitchen gardens and practicing horticulture to solve the problem of poverty among the people more especially those from rural areas. Parents more especially those from rural areas should be sensitized on the importance of girls education because the study found out especially from the rural areas that most people thought that girls education was useless and that girls are meant to be married hence such attitudes need to be changed.