| dc.description.abstract | This study delved into community participation in the retention of girls in UPE schools, taking the case of Kango Sub-County, Zombo District. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the role played and challenges faced by members of the community in promoting the retention of girls and to suggest strategies of enhancing the retention of girls. The role of the community in promoting the retention of girls in UPE schools was studied because girls were dropping out of schools despite extensive reform and support programmes aimed at promoting girls’ cohort survival, which pointed to the hypothesis that failures on the part of the community, rather than government and the schools themselves, are responsible for the drop out of girls before completing the primary cycle of education.
Using questionnaires and group discussions, data were collected from 42 parents and 42 girls of primary Five to Seven, 27 teachers, 3 Head teachers of Kango P.7, Ezoo P7 and Mvuranyi P.7 schools, 4 Officers of the District Education Office, 1 Local Council member and 24 members of School Management Committees (SMCs) because these were believed to be conversant with the role that members of the local communities should play in promoting the retention of girls in primary schools until they complete. The data were collected during the first quarter of 2010 using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. It was, subsequently, analyzed using frequency counts, percentages and content analysis and presented on Tables and Pie-charts. The percentages and pie-charts illustrated the central tendencies in the results from the questionnaires that were administered to the parents while content analysis enabled the presentation of the views of the interviewees.
The findings were that parents send their daughters to school, provide for some of their financial and scholastic requirements, rarely follow-up on their performance and, in some instances, participate in the schools’ co-curricular programs while members of SMCs police truancy and promote the development of structures that could enable girls to remain in school until they complete. Nevertheless, the members of the community are constrained by poverty; parents are constrained by their inability to comprehend and, subsequently, follow-up on their daughters’ academic progress and low value for girls’ education. Notwithstanding those that were found to be playing a role in the education of their children, it was also established that some of the parents do not play these roles as expected of them.
It is, therefore, recommended that government, and relevant civil society organisations, promote the alleviation of household poverty so as to put the parents in a better position to provide for their daughters’ school related financial and personal needs and that parents are helped to develop capacity to keep up with and, subsequently, follow-up on their children’s school performance. Accordingly, research is recommended into ways through which government and relevant civil society organisations can alleviate household poverty, so that the parents of girls are put in a good position to meet the financial requirements of their daughters with the view to keeping them in school until they complete. | en_US |
