Nature of Educational Wastage in Public Secondary Schools in Kericho County, Kenya

Abstract

Despite the fact that Kenya's guiding philosophy for education is the concern that every Kenyan has the inalienable right to basic education no matter his or her socio-economic status, the depth and prevalence of wastage is quite alarming in some counties in the county. The gist of this study was to examine the nature of educational wastage in public secondary schools in Kericho County, Kenya. A table of random numbers was used to select   10 secondary schools from which 10 principals, 25 teachers and 275 students were   selected yielding   a sample size of 310 subjects for the study. The data gathered through questionnaire, was analyzed using mean, median, and percentage. To determine the magnitude of educational wastage and to identify the gender and grade level that was severely affected by wastage, five consecutive years’ students’ document (enrolment, repetition and dropout) was used. Wastage rate was calculated and indicated for each grade level according to the past five years data. The findings have indicated that high repetition rate was registered in all forms from one to four, high drop-out rate was registered at form three and high over-all wastage rate was registered at form four. It was also identified that rate of wastage among boys was higher than girls. Finally, the weighted mean scores, over-all wastage average results revealed that students related, school related and socio-economic background variables were found significant factors behind low internal efficiency of secondary schools. The findings therefore suggest that improving these variables may take a considerable change in alleviating wastage of secondary education. Based on these findings and conclusion drawn, it was recommended that the measures regarding creating awareness for parents, nearby school building, motivating teachers, creating conducive school environment and improving school facilities and services should be taken to minimize the educational wastage of secondary schools in the study area.

Keywords: Education, public secondary schools, nature of wastage, Kericho County, Kenya