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Why do pupils dropout when educationis ‘free’? Explaining school dropoutamong the urban poor in NairobiBenta Abuyaa, Moses Oketcha & Peter Musyokaa
a Education Research Program, African Population and HealthCenter, Kenya.Published online: 12 Jul 2012.
To cite this article: Benta Abuya, Moses Oketch & Peter Musyoka (2013) Why do pupilsdropout when education is ‘free’? Explaining school dropout among the urban poor inNairobi, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43:6, 740-762, DOI:10.1080/03057925.2012.707458
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Why do pupils dropout when education is ‘free’? Explainingschool dropout among the urban poor in Nairobi
Benta Abuya*, Moses Oketch and Peter Musyoka
Education Research Program, African Population and Health Center, Kenya
The introduction of universal primary education in sub-Sahara Africancountries in the 1990s increased enrolment rates and provided opportuni-ties to children who were previously not in school. Research demon-strates that eliminating fees is not the magic bullet that deliversuniversal access. This study seeks to determine risk factors associatedwith dropout among primary school children in the low-income areas ofNairobi. Qualitative data is from the Education Research Program, col-lected between June and July 2008. The study found that: dumpsites inthe two slum sites of Korogocho and Viwandani lure children out ofschool; school levies still charged in schools keep children out of school;and chronic poverty within families lure girls aged 14–16 into transac-tional sex. In conclusion, the declaration of free primary education is notsufficient to realize improved educational attainment as dropout after ini-tial entry negates the purpose for which it was introduced.
Keywords: equity and access; gender issues; primary education
Introduction
Introduction of universal primary education (UPE) in several sub-Sahara Afri-can countries increased enrolment rates and provided opportunities to childrenwho were not in school prior to the UPE policies (Ohba 2009; Oketch et al.2010). Despite being the goal of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa sincethe 1960s, providing universal and free primary education (FPE) hasremained elusive for over 40 years in Kenya’s case (Oketch and Rolleston2007). According to UNESCO (2008), the open democratic systems that existin many countries have certainly helped this cause, particularly between 1990and 2000. As 2015 approaches, access to basic education has been seen as anend in itself, a human right and a vital part of individuals’ capacity to leadvaluable lives (Birdsall, Levine, and Ibrahim 2005). The importance of FPEnotwithstanding, scholars and development agencies working on educationissues have overemphasized the role of FPE as a ‘magic bullet’ solution tothe challenges of school children in many sub-Sahara African countries. Free
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Compare, 2013Vol. 43, No. 6, 740–762, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2012.707458
� 2012 British Association for International and Comparative Education
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primary education provided mass enrolment into schools in Kenya but theissues of sustainability and primary school completion still remain a chal-lenge. For example, about 400,000 children who joined grade one in 2003did not complete grade eight in 2010 (Daily Nation 2011). These childrencould have either repeated or dropped out of school (Government of theRepublic of Kenya 2011). Since the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Kenyahas forbidden repetition of classes by students, the possible explanation forthe 400,000 (59%) not completing school on time would be due to dropout.This means that only 41% were able to complete the primary cycle of school-ing on time. Figure 1 shows the trends of school enrolment and completionrates leading up to 2010. The difference between children enrolled and thosewho completed school range from 11, 14 and 9.7% in 1999, 2003 and 2009,respectively. Therefore, leading up 2010 there was a clear indication of thehigh wastage levels of about 10%, which can be explained by either repetitionor dropout, with minimal repetition a vast majority of these children musthave dropped out of school.
While access has improved, UPE is still a mirage to many school-goingchildren. One factor to this mirage is dropout, and there are several factorsthat lead to this. Common ones cited in studies include: child-level factors(Aloise-Young, Cruickshank, and Chavez 2002; Hunt 2008; Lloyd, Mensch,and Clark 2000), household factors (Chimombo et al. 2000; Guryan 2004;Hanushek, Lavy, and Hitomi 2006), school factors (Chimombo et al. 2000;Lee and Burkam 2003) and community factors (Ampiah and Adu-Yeboah2009; Christenson and Thurlow 2004; Tansel 2002). Nonetheless, there areunique cases that require contextual understanding, where qualitative narra-tives of those who have dropped out, together with their parents and com-munity around the schools, may shed light on possible causes. This study
Figure 1. Primary enrolment and completion rates.
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seeks to contribute to the debate on providing FPE for the poor by listeningto the narratives of children who have dropped out, their parents and com-munity members who are around the schools in the urban slums of Nairobi.The narratives of the children ‘who have been left behind’ in the FPE era,the parents and community members will illuminate the alternative ways ofensuring sustained FPE by the Kenyan government. Below is a discussionof some of the factors associated with dropout.
Child-level factors
The main characteristics highlighted in the literature on primary-school com-pletion and dropout rates include child’s gender, age, cognitive skills, nutri-tional and health status and peer influence (Aloise-Young, Cruickshank, andChavez 2002; Hunt 2008; Lloyd, Mensch, and Clark 2000). According toLloyd, Mensch and Clark (2000), late school entrants are just as likely todrop out as those who enter early, leaving late starters with fewer years ofschooling on average. The relationship between the gender of the child andthe ability to complete school is important, especially in the African context,where cultural beliefs, like son preference in school attendance, are stillupheld (Mensch et al. 1999).
Household factors
Research shows that the main household characteristics that impact onschool-completion rates are household size, parental education, householdincome and assets (Chimombo et al. 2000; Guryan 2004; Hanushek, Lavy,and Hitomi 2006). Household wealth determines the ability of a householdto invest in the child’s education (Connelly and Zheng 2003; Guryan 2004).If the opportunity cost of a child being in school is high for parents, thechance of dropping out remains high (Chimombo et al. 2000). According toHunt (2008), children from well-off families are more likely to stay inschool than those from poor households, who may never attend school orare often at risk of dropping out. In addition, children from poorer back-grounds are in most cases under pressure to withdraw from school as theyget older due to the increased opportunity cost of their time.
School factors
School factors that predict of school dropout include school distance, qualityinstruction in the schools and costs incurred by households in keeping theirchildren in schools. If a school is perceived to be of poor quality and cannotprovide children with the necessary skills, households may decide not toinvest in their children’s education. Thus, poor school quality may discouragehouseholds from educating their children and prefer that they be engaged in
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income-generating activities (Chimombo et al. 2000). According to Lee andBurkam (2003), students are less likely to drop out from schools that offeracademic courses and few non-academic courses. The authors further arguethat where there is a positive relationship between teachers and students,dropout rates are low. Hanushek, Lavy and Hitomi (2006) argue that studentsattending higher quality schools tend to stay in school longer and completehigher grades.
Community factors
Community factors that influence dropout are rural or urban location andlevel of urban development, distances to regional urban centres and the localeconomic activities. Several scholars have shown that communities caninfluence dropout rates by providing school children with opportunities towork during school sessions (Ampiah and Adu-Yeboah 2009; Tansel 2002).The study further found that households in industrializing communities tendto better educate their children than households in the agricultural communi-ties (Tansel 2002). In sum, as indicated in the literature and as argued byChristenson and Thurlow (2004), school dropout cannot be understood inisolation of contextual factors as it is as a result of interplay among individ-uals, households, schools and community factors.
Conceptual framework
In conceptualizing the dropout of pupils in school in the study sites of Korogo-cho, Viwandani, Harambee and Jericho, we adapt Bronfenbrenner’s (1979)ecological framework for understanding the educational risk. The frameworkasserts that development is a direct consequence of the interactions that occurwithin a micro system, such as the school, family and the peer group, and indi-rectly a consequence of the interactions across the systems.
These systems include the micro-system, meso-system, exo-system andmacro-system. For purposes of this study, we conceptualize the micro sys-tem of a pupil to be the characteristics that affect individual performance ofthe child, the meso-system to be the family or household characteristics, theexo-system to be the school characteristics and the macro-system to be thecommunity and societal characteristics that may determine a child to stay inor drop out of school. According to Bronfenbrenner (1977) students haveinnate characteristics such as intelligence, personality, development potential,experiences and behaviour, which, through effective interaction and balancewith the classroom, household, community and socio-cultural environments,enhance educational achievement.
Moreover, the community is very critical in the development of the child andtheir subsequent behaviour (Heneveld and Craig 1996). There is the interactionof the community with the individual child, the home in which the child resides
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and the school that the child attends (Johnson 1994). A close community inter-action with the school leads to more meaningful experiences for the children,whereas a remote community interaction with the school leads to less meaning-ful experiences. In addition, the education success of students is dependent onthe cultural orientation of the society in which the student is a member. Societyand culture transforms the characteristics of every individual so as to contributeto a particular collective of a group’s existence (Johnson 1994). Moreover, a‘child is transformed into a group member by the accumulation of human expe-riences preserved in the cultural repository’ (45) (see Figure 2).
We come to this study with the understanding that one of the fundamentalmeans to reaching universal access to education, and reaching the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, is to eliminate barriers to schooling accessibility, such asschool fees. Research has demonstrated that FPE is not the magic bullet thatdelivers universal access among the poor within the public school system(Oketch et al. 2010). In addition, the slum context poses a lot of challenges(Mudege, Zulu, and Izugbara 2008) that predispose the slum children to therisk of dropping out of school. We seek to establish those risk factors thatmake access to and subsequent sustainability of children in school a dream forchildren attending school in the urban slums of Nairobi.
Data and methods
Data and sampling techniques
Data for this study is obtained from the qualitative follow-up study ofchildren who have dropped out of school within the Education Research
Figure 2. Ecological framework. Adapted from Bronfenbrenner’s EcologicalFramework (1979).
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Programme data sets. Data was collected in the two slum communities ofKorogocho and Viwandani and two non-slum communities of Harambeeand Jericho.1 Children targeted for follow-up were purposefully selected inKorogocho, Viwandani, Harambee and Jericho between 2005 and 2007.
Purposeful sampling of 40 children provided a selection of participantswho provided information-rich cases worth of an in-depth study. The chil-dren enrolled in the study had been away from school for at least one year.For purposes of this study, a dropout is an individual who was enrolled inschool in one given school year, but is not enrolled in the following schoolyear, has not transferred to another school or learning institution, has notcompleted the educational level (in this case, primary) and is not absent dueto death, illness or some other excused absence from school. According toPatton (2002), purposeful sampling puts an emphasis on an in-depth under-standing of the phenomenon under study. Data was collected from childrenaged 6–9 and 10–13 years. In addition, teachers, community members/lead-ers and parents and guardians provided information to corroborate the expe-riences of children (see Table 1).
We employed a qualitative methodology following the work of Straus andCorbin (1998). We used an interview-based approach to obtain the data frompupils and teachers. In addition, focus-group discussions (FGDs) were usedto obtain information from parents and community members and leaders.
The pilot study was conducted in the first two weeks of June, 2008. In-depth interviews (IDIs) and FGDs for the main study were conducted for sixweeks between June and July, 2008 (see Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 for theIDI guide and FGD protocol, respectively). The interviews were conducted inKiswahili and later translated into English after verbatim transcription. TheIDIs lasted between 30 and 60 minutes, while FGDs lasted for at least twohours (see Table 2 for background characteristics of FGD’s). Each interviewwas tape recorded to ensure that all the data were captured. Data collection
Table 1. Number of the dropouts sampled for the study.
Dropouts
Site Age group M F
Korogocho 6–9 3 310–13 3 3
Viwandani 6–9 3 310–13 3 3
Harambee 6–9 2 210–13 2 2
Jericho 6–9 2 210–13 2 2
Total 20 20
Notes: M = male; F = female.
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was approved by the ethical review board at Kenya Medical Research Insti-tute.
Background characteristics of the FGD participants
Table 2 shows the demographic characteristics of the FGD participants. Therewas a gender balance between the male and female participants, except inViwandani where there was 100% participation by males. In addition, themajority of the participants across all sites were married, with 79, 100, 100and 75% for Korogocho, Viwandani, Jericho and Harambee, respectively. Theage of the participants was 21 years and over. Korogocho had FGDparticipants that cut across all ages. However, in Jericho a vast majority of theparticipants (66.67%) were aged between 21 and 30 years. The majority of theFGD participants had secondary education in Korogocho, Viwandani andJericho, with 50, 56 and 77%, respectively. On the other hand, Harambee hada balanced number of participants with secondary education and more thansecondary education (50%).
Data collection instruments
Semi-structured interview protocols were used for conducting the interviews.The open-ended questions allowed for free expression of individual opin-ions, thereby providing a variety of responses from the participants (Patton1990). For instance, children interviews lasted between 30 minutes and 1hour. In addition, FGD guides were also used to gather information fromthe parents, community members and leaders. On average there were eightparticipants in the FGDs. There were separate FGDs for males and females.Inherent in this method is the aspect of group interaction as the source ofdata and the active role of the researcher as a facilitator of the group discus-sion. Moreover, attempts were made to be gender sensitive throughout theinterviewing process. For example, males were interviewed by male inter-viewers and a male moderator facilitated a male FGD. Similarly, femaleswere interviewed by female interviewers and a female moderator facilitateda female FGD.
Analysis strategy
Nvivo software was used to facilitate the coding process. This softwarepackage facilitated work with the data and assisted in organizing for thecoding process. We generated codes from the concepts that emerged fromthe conceptual framework and in the literature as those associated with drop-out. We also identified codes from reading the first set of transcripts. Thesecodes are the ones that ‘emerged’ from the data, which Straus and Corbin(1998) would term as grounded in the data. These were issues that pupils,
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Table
2.Backgroundcharacteristicsof
FGD
participants(n
=48).
Participants’characteristics
Korogocho
n(%)
Viwandani
n(%)
Jericho
n(%)
Haram
bee
n(%)
Gender
Fem
ale
6(42.86)
0(0.00)
6(46.15)
6(50.00)
Male
8(57.14)
9(100.00)
7(53.85)
6(50.00)
Maritalstatus
Married
11(78.57)
9(100.00)
13(100.00)
9(75.00)
Not
married
3(21.43)
0(0.00)
0(0.00)
3(25.00)
Age
21–30years
3(21.43)
0(0.00)
0(0.00)
8(66.67)
31–40years
6(42.86)
3(33.33)
1(7.69)
2(16.67)
41–50years
3(21.43)
3(33.33)
5(38.46)
0(0.00)
Above
50years
2(14.29)
3(33.33)
6(46.15)
2(16.67)
Missing
0(0.00)
0(0.00)
1(7.69)
0(0.00)
Educatio
nlevel
Never
attended
prim
ary/hasprim
aryeducation
6(42.86)
3(33.33)
1(7.69)
0(0.00)
Has
secondaryeducation
7(50.00)
5(55.56)
10(76.92)
6(50.00)
Has
higher
educationthan
secondary
1(7.14)
1(11.11)
1(7.69)
6(50.00)
Missing
0(0.00)
0(0.00)
1(7.69)
0(0.00)
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parents, teachers and the community members identified to be associatedwith pupils dropping out of school, and were different from those alreadyidentified from the literature and the conceptual framework. The main goalof this type of analysis was to discover the extent of the relationshipbetween reasons associated with dropout as they emerge ‘bottom up’ fromthe data, with those that are ‘top down’, obtained from the literature and theconceptual framework. Matrices were then used to visually display the datain columns. Matrices are, ‘the crossing of two or more variables … to seehow they interact … [which] can be expanded to a more holistic case ori-ented style’ (Miles and Huberman 1994, 239). In summary, codes wereimportant in locating important concepts, themes and relationships. Conclu-sions were drawn by ‘noting patterns, themes; making contrasts, compari-sons; clustering; and counting’ (243) from the matrices established.
Results
Education is like a journey to heaven. Everyone should be saved. The parentand the child should be saved, so that tomorrow we can leave the children insituation where they can support themselves while we are gone. It is everyparent’s responsibility to support their children and plan their future …(Female parent, FGD)
The importance of education for children is summarized above by the FGDrespondent. This study found that reasons why children drop out of schoolranged from community/societal issues, school related challenges and fam-ily-level characteristics. The results show that the presence of adverse cir-cumstances in the ecological contexts negated the pupil’s ability to stay inschool, leading to dropout. For instance, pupils with personal problems, liv-ing in households with negative circumstances, attending schools with insti-tutional challenges and not supported by the community in which theschools were situated had reduced chances of persisting in school.
Community/environmental issues
The study found that the factors for children dropping out of schoolincluded community factors (described 40 times by the participants), family-level characteristics (described 57 times) and school-related factors(described 32 times). The community hindrances to pupils’ successful com-pletion of primary school in the FPE era included presence of dumpsitesamong the poor living within the slums and non-slums where the pupilsresided, insecurity and crime, peer influence, drug taking and alcohol con-sumption by the pupils. The dumpsites or bomas2 were an ‘attraction’ to thepupils who wanted to get a source of income to sustain their families or tosustain their habits – inclusive of drug taking and alcohol consumption. Of
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40 community factors described, 11 were those related to dumpsites. Thepresence of dumpsites in the slums lured the pupils from school into moneymaking ventures. This is what a parent said:
You know our children nowadays are hungry for money. He leaves the house… I see he has carried his books. He goes down those sides [referring to thedumping site] and gangs up with those who have gone to pick up things …plastics … and take them for weighing. (Male parent, IDI)
Another parent reported the addictive nature of money. She said, ‘When achild starts picking up these things, and gets used to having money, a childcan’t go to school. It’s something like … that becomes sort of addictive…’
Use of drugs and alcohol was another larger community factor that ledto pupils dropping out of school. Of 40 community factors, 8 were thoserelated to the use of drugs and alcohol and the presence of day and nightclubs. Older pupils already used to taking drugs and alcohol encouraged theyounger ones to join in the activity. A respondent in a community-memberFGD had this to say:
The bigger boys normally introduce the smaller ones to smoking cigarettesand bhang [Cannabis satvia]. Some of them see it from the parents whosmoke and drink and they think it is okay. … Once they start smoking bhang,it automatically affects their school going and they eventually drop out …(Male community member, FGD)
With regard to the presence of the clubs that play music all day, therebyincreasing idleness among the children and luring them away from going toschool, one parent said:
We know they go to these leisure clubs where they drink, dance and have agood time. … With time this life of going to the clubs and having money getsthe better of them and such children stop going to school … (Dropout maleparent, IDI)
Community leaders were disturbed about the lifestyle or reckless behaviourin both the slums and the non-slums. They observed that the children see alife of alcohol and overall recklessness that diminishes the value of educa-tion at an early age. One observed:
… there is a big problem due to illicit brews; most of the residents hereare alcoholics. I don’t know if children from Grogan go visiting otherplaces outside the slums … so it’s like the child knows the only occupa-tion as brewing and selling the illicit brew. … He will believe this to bethe only occupation available. In such an environment, he will not imaginethat people go to school … (Female community leader, FGD)
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Security concerns within the community where the schools are locatedalso made pupils drop out of school. Of 40 community factors, 10 werethose related to security concerns leading to school dropout. A child whohad dropped out of school said this:
The group gets stationed in one place and they plan on how to strangle peopleand snatch their items … I used to be part of it. … They get hold of peopleand can even rape children … when such things happen we pupils will fear toattend school. (Male child, IDI)
In addition, peers also influenced whether a child stayed in school or droppedout, either at the community level or at a personal level. This they did by lur-ing their friends away from school to ‘madenga’ sites. For instance, peersaccounted for 4 of the 40 community-related factors for dropout and 5 of the27 negative personal traits that led to dropout. A parent observed:
Friends to the children are also responsible for this problem. … Children fol-low others and hope to make a life by selling property [that which they getfrom ‘boma’] to get money and spend it. … At this point the child gets out ofcontrol … (Female parent, IDI)
Family-level characteristics
Family level characteristics contributed to a vast majority of the reasons thatwere given for children dropping out of school. These included family vio-lence, family dissolution, family poverty, lack of parental monitoring, preg-nancy among school girls, illnesses and incapacitation of parents and lack ofsanitary towels for the girls.
Family violence
Family violence accounted for 12 of the 30 family-related reasons for drop-out. Negative happenings in families were responsible for children’s irregu-lar attendance of school, leading to school dropout. This included violencedirected towards spouses – the mothers of the children – spilling over to thechildren. This violence made children leave the household in order to escapeit. This is what one of the dropouts explained:
… at times my father used to come in drunk and beat my mother at home. …We used to see them fight, throwing things at each other. … It was not easyto know or understand what was going on … eventually I got tired of the vio-lence and I left home to stay with my friends and … I stopped going toschool. (Female child, IDI)
Some of the children recounted how they were abused by their fathers inthe process of the family violence and eventually they gave up on school. Adropout narrated:
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… my father comes home in the evening, he is drunk and starts beating mymother … when I ask him for money to take to school, he starts abusing me,and I feel very bad … one time I felt that I have had enough and just stayedat home … (Male child, IDI)
Community leaders in one of the slums reiterated the effect of the familybrawls on the schooling of the kids. One said:
… domestic violence also contributes to the problem of dropout. If domesticbrawls are frequent in the house, the child also rebels and runs away fromhome and seeks consolation from his friends … (Female community leader,FGD)
Family dissolution
This accounted for 10 out of 30 family-related reasons of dropout. It occurswhen a nuclear family made up of at least a child and two parents ceases tobe together because of death, separation or divorce. For instance, family dis-solution caused by the parents’ death put children in the custody of relativeswho could not sustain them in school. A community leader in one of theslums said:
Many of these children here live with foster parents because their parents havedied of among other diseases, HIV/AIDS. When children are orphaned, theyare taken in by relatives who eventually become overburdened. … In order tosustain their livelihoods the foster parents tell them that there is no point ofgoing to school when they must eat in the evening. So, such children areengaged in commercial work so as to support the household in terms of food.(Female community leader, FGD)
In addition, the death of parents made children to assume the role of par-ents. Such children stopped going to school. This is what one of the respon-dents in the community FGD intimated:
Children who have attained school going age are not enrolled, and if they are,they drop out because many are playing the role of the parents, and have to takecare of their siblings. Some of them are ‘total’ orphans in that they have no rel-atives to take them in. If you look at research findings from Nairobi, 40–45%of households are headed by children. The child cannot therefore go to schoolas she is busy trying to make ends meet. (Male community leader, FGD)
Family poverty
Poverty was described both at the community and at the family level. At thecommunity level, poverty was described 9 times out of 40, while at familylevel it was described 4 times out of 30. Family poverty impaired the abilityof girls to complete school. Girls were driven by chronic poverty to engage
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in transactional sex. Transactional sexual relationships were not congruentwith school attendance. This is what one girl said:
Sometimes we find ourselves driven into prostitution without realizing it. Thisis to support the family, so, a girl sleeps with a man and she is given sh.20,sh.10 or sh.50. When the girl takes the money to her mother … she will becongratulated for being able to earn some money and this will encourage herto continue … (Female child, IDI)
Community leaders participating in FGDs summarized how family povertymay result in child prostitution. A respondent stated:
Prostitution results from hunger. A child needs to eat yet has no money tobuy food, and there is no food at home. So when she is bought chips forKsh.10 she sleeps with the boy or man … the following day such a child willnot attend school. … With time she stops going to school … (Female commu-nity leader, FGD)
Children not monitored by parents
Inadequate parental monitoring impaired parental knowledge of the where-abouts and deeds of their children. This was described 7 times out of 27personal characteristics responsible for dropout. Without monitoring fromparents, children drifted away from school and dropped out. A respondentin an FGD involving parents said:
If the mother is busy in her own world, and the father is doing his ownthings, they really don’t care what the other [including their children] aredoing but they are living together. It is likely to affect the child because thereis no one to give direction to the child. (Female parent, FGD)
Pregnancy among school girls
This was another personal issue that led to school dropout among girls,described 4 times out of 27 of the personal reasons for dropout. Girls whofound themselves pregnant were not able to continue with school. One ofthe teachers intimated:
Girls drop out of school because of pregnancy-related issues. … Some of thegirls come to school and when they leave school in the evening they don’t gohome straight. Instead, they pass through their boyfriends’ place … soon theyrealize they are pregnant and they end up dropping out of school… (Femaleteacher, IDI)
Illnesses and incapacitation of parents
Children also dropped out of school due to illnesses and incapacitation oftheir parents (described 5 times out of 27). Illness and incapacitation
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affected children’s personal concentration in school and for some who hadto take care of their parents, dropping out of school was inevitable. Arespondent among community leaders from Jeri had this to say about paren-tal illness and school attendance:
… as she has mentioned, the heath status of that family will be the guidingfactor. Sometimes the parents are sick suffering from HIV-related illness …such a child may miss many days of school until they do not see the use ofgoing back to school. (Male community member, FGD)
Girls lacked sanitary towels
One nagging personal issue that affected girls and led to school dropout waslack of sanitary towels, accounting for 7 of the 27 reasons for girls droppingout of school. Girls could not stay in school during the period of menstrua-tion and missed attending school for three to five days every month. Withtime, some stopped coming to school. A respondent among women whohad interacted with girls said:
… in the case of girls they get periods (monthly) unlike boys so the reasonsfor dropping out of school for the two sexes are totally different. And due tofinancial constraints these girls cannot afford pads so they decide to stay homethan go to school where other children will laugh at them … (Female commu-nity leader, FGD)
School-related issues
School factors for dropout ranged from inadequate classroom space due tocongestion (8 out of 32 of school-related factors), lack of rapport and demo-tivation by the teachers (8 out of 32), to the high fees charged in theschools, particularly private schools (11 out of 32).
Inadequate classroom space
This resulted into congestion in the classes, making learning difficultfor many children in the schools within the slums. Inadequate classroomspace was described as a school-related factor for school dropout in 8out of 32 cases. Congestion, an outcome of too many pupils crammedin one class, was a concern to parents, one of whom had this tosay:
… the other problem is related to the environment in which a child studies.You find that a child goes to school and has to sit in a room that has morethan a 100 children. A lot of these children will not be learning much sincethe teachers’ attention is divided. At some point the child will walk out ofclass and may never return … (Male parent, FGD)
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Congestion was also due to the introduction of FPE. Faced withclassrooms with many students, teachers were not able to give individu-alized instruction to children. Teachers work was made more complexwith the entry of adult learners into the classes struggling to be studentsamidst young children. Adult learners were neither attentive nor werethey willing to participate in class. Such learners stopped going toschool at the slightest provocation – sometimes brought about becauseof punishment by teachers for an assignment not completed. One of theteachers said:
… because of free education, a teacher has a class of 100 children instead of50. … This teacher will not have time to attend to them individually. … Theteacher is also trying to cover the syllabus. This same teacher is facing a chal-lenge from a pupil who joined school late and feels like an adult. If he isgiven any instructions he refuses to listen and expects the teacher to ignore it.The moment the teacher punishes this pupil he will not come back to school… (Male teacher, IDI)
Lack of rapport and demotivation by the teachers
Students opted to leave school when teachers did not establish a rapportwith them in class. Lack of rapport comprised 8 out of the 32 school-relatedfactors in this category. Children left school encouraged by their parents,who exploited the existing negative relationship between the teachers andthe parents. One of the women leaders noted:
When a child comes home and says the teacher has beaten him without anygood reason. … The child says that the teacher does not listen to us butonly listens to a few pupils in the class. … Another time a child comeshome complaining about the same teacher the parent says, ‘leave thatschool; that school does not even do well in exams, they only beat andignore children … the child takes advantage and stops going to school …(Woman leader, FGD)
In addition, it was felt that some of the teachers were a source of discour-agement to pupils, thereby making the classroom and the school environ-ment de-motivating for the learning processes. For instance, a teacherhumiliated a child in front of other children, exposing what they knew aboutthe child’s background without being sensitive to the child’s feelings. Amale community leader noted this:
Teachers behave in a peculiar way. If they notice a child is not wellgroomed they tend to get oversensitive, A teacher will yell, ‘you! Tell yourmum you are not supposed to come with that torn cardigan.’ ‘you! don’tcome with that blouse’ the child then refuses to go to school. (Male commu-nity leader, FGD)
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Levies and fees charged by schools
Private schools. Children in the private schools dropped out of school dueto the levies charged by the schools. Levies and fees were described 11times out of 32. The inability of parents to pay levies resulted in childrenmissing school. With time, intermittent school attendance led to school drop-out. Women participants from Koch3 had this to say:
… private schools contribute to the problem of dropout because of the feespaid. There are many children who would like to attend private schools butfees keep them from attending school regularly. In some of the schools, feesmay be as little as sh.100 but as long as the parent cannot pay. … The childwill be sent home. … Children are dropping out of school due to feescharged. … This must be paid before learning continues. (Female communitymember, FGD)
Public schools. Parents who had enrolled their children in public schoolsincurred extra levies to buy school uniforms, school bags and shoes. If par-ents were unable to buy these basics for school, their children were kept outof class. The end result is dropping out of school for such children. A malecommunity member from Jeri4 said:
Free education has also contributed to children dropping out … many childrenhave been sent to school but they cannot afford school uniform so we areforced to step in and buy uniform. It has been a big challenge … these thingscan be expensive for a person living in the slum. … A person who earnsabout 50 shillings a day … (Male community member, FGD)
Discussion and conclusion
This paper sought to establish why pupils drop out of school while educationis free in Kenya. The study highlights reasons that put children at risk of andsubsequent drop out from school. These factors ranged from community fac-tors and family-level characteristics, to adverse family situations. Community-level factors were significant risk factors in school dropout. For example, thepresence of dumpsites and poverty at the community-level were key factorsfor children dropping out of school. In addition, the effect of poverty perme-ated all the ecological levels surrounding the child as (s)he tried to navigatethe schooling process. For instance, poverty existed at the community level,affected the families who lived within the community, making them lackbasics for their children, like money to pay for school levies. At a personallevel, poverty incapacitated parents’ ability to buy sanitary towels for girls.
From the foregoing discussion it can be seen that poverty in the commu-nity had multiple effects for children in the slums. On the one hand, povertyincapacitated parents’ ability to keep children in school. On the other hand,it pushed the children into money-making ventures, like collecting ‘mad-
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enga’ to sell. The acquisition of money led the children into drug use, alco-hol consumption and frequenting clubs. The consequence was that the chil-dren were not motivated to re-enter school. This finding is supported byMudege, Zulu and Izugbara (2008), who found that idleness, alcohol, drugabuse and crime did not encourage school attendance among the urban poor.The consequence of poverty for girls was engaging in transactional sexualrelationships. Transactional sex was one means some girls used to obtainfundamental needs for themselves and for their families. Thus, lack of basicsupplies and school fees increased the chances of children, especially girls,needing money, thereby making them more vulnerable to sexual demandsby the older males (Collins 2009). In conclusion, poverty had a commonthread across the ecological system and its complexity in affecting the edu-cation participation of pupils is significant (Pridmore and Jere 2011). Thisstudy shows that the persistence of children in school would be dependenton the interaction of community members with the individual child, a posi-tive environment cultivated within the home in which the child resides anda connection with the school that the particular child attends.
Our study found that certain family characteristics in the home did notfoster the required positive environment needed by the children to stay inschool. For instance, family dissolution occasioned by death of parentsresulted in such children being heads of households. Child-headed house-holds were susceptible to increased poverty, reducing the chances of thesechildren staying in school. This finding is similar to the experiences oforphans in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where they are more likely tohead households (Foster et al. 1997) and even less likely to attend schoolregularly if they are double orphaned (Case, Paxson, and Ableidinger 2004;Monasch and Boerma 2004). Moreover, this study underscores the impactof domestic violence on children at home remaining a key reason for chil-dren dropping out of school. Any form of violence against children negatesthe global commitment to end all forms of violence against children(UNICEF 2007, 2009, 2010) and emphasizes the need for school environ-ments to be made safe and friendly to cushion children whose homeenvironments are violent (UNICEF 2009, 2010).
This study found that congestion in schools occasioned by the rush by par-ents to take their children into public schools at the onset of FPE was a riskfactor for dropout. From the narratives of the participants, a classroom withtoo many students was difficult to teach. As such, teachers could not give indi-vidualized instruction to children. This minimized classroom interaction. Thisfinding is similar to the work of various scholars (Abagi and Sifuna 2006;Oketch and Rolleston 2007; UNESCO 2005), who argue that when teachershandle large classes of 60, 80 or 100 pupils, such pupils hardly get the tea-cher’s attention in class, thereby impairing the learning process. Although theauthors did not establish that reduced attention leads to dropout, the data pre-sented in this paper leads us to speculate that continual lack of attention
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reduced children’s interest in school to an extent that they ceased going toschool.
However, this study found that some of the teachers did not create a rap-port with pupils and demotivated the students in the process of their class-room teaching, exacerbating their risk of dropout. While it is true thatteachers may have been hostile to pupils and demotivated them in the pro-cess, we conclude that teachers were overwhelmed with the number of chil-dren they had to teach. We suspect that teachers’ fatigue was transformedinto unfriendliness towards children in the class. Our finding and explana-tion has also been captured by Wax (2003), when she observed that manyKenyan students were in the classrooms and yet were not able to meet withtheir teacher.
Overall, our findings suggest that among the poor living in slums, bothboys and girls gained initial access into schools with the introduction ofFPE. With the initial access to school, the element of sex preference waseliminated, at least in the initial phase of FPE. We found that boysdropped out of school due to the need to make money from selling ‘mad-enga’ from the dumpsites, while girls dropped out due to pregnancy andtransactional sexual relationships as a result of hard economic realities. Weconclude that the risk of dropout, though different for girls and boys, is adanger for both.
Narratives from this study show that despite the FPE program, levies arestill being charged in school. For private schools, this was embedded in theelement of being ‘private’, but for public schools the levies catered for itemsnot covered by the capitation grants to schools by the MoE. Therefore, FPEdid not entirely solve the problems of schooling for the poor (Oketch et al.2010), who sometimes dropped out of school because of lack of fees to sus-tain them in school. This finding reinforces the argument of scholars(Cornelly and Zheng 2003; Guryan 2004) that the wealth of a householdeventually determines the ability of a household to invest in the educationof the children. It should be noted that the increased incidence of low-feeprivate schools in poor areas has been seen in slum context in Kenya as aresponse to a lack of investment in school quality and an emphasis oninvestment in school access during the FPE period (Tooley, Dixon, andStanfield 2008). However, the study was limited by the fact that it was con-ducted in two slum sites of Korogocho and Viwandani and two non-slumsites of Harambee and Jericho. This study does give insights into the situa-tion of children in these four sites and to those children who have droppedout of school. Beyond that, it raises hypotheses from these pupils’ accountsof problems of school dropout in other schools in urban areas of Kenya.
This paper raises significant policy implications on primary educationof children in the urban context. There is need to have poverty-interven-tion programs (for instance cash transfers or subsidies), especially for par-ents/guardians in low-income neighbourhoods. Beyond capitation grants
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by the MOE to some private schools in the slums and the recent MoEinitiative to send Quality Assurance Officers to the slum schools, theMoE may need to look into the quality of teachers who are teaching inpublic and private slums schools. More importantly, the governmentshould strive to attract quality teachers to the slums schools. This can bedone by declaring the slum areas hardship teaching zones, thereby teach-ers who are employed there can receive a hardship allowance similar tothose teachers who teach in the hardship zones already gazetted by theMOE. In addition, the government could mandate that teachers who livedand went to school in the slums prior to their employment should beemployed to teach in the slum areas for a stipulated period of time, as away of also giving back to their communities. This would apply eventhose whose education would have enabled them to live outside the slumareas.
Moreover, sustaining enrolment in the FPE era will have to include tack-ling chronic poverty by encouraging alternative income-generating activitiesfor households, rather than being solely dependent on the dumpsites. Thisintervention would require a sector-wide approach to educational planningand policy implementation. In addition, this paper recognizes that the MOEof Kenya should consider models of educational interventions that can pro-vide the flexible delivery of the curriculum to pupils that has worked incountries such as Malawi.
In conclusion, pupils’ persistence in school depends on protective factorsbeing part and parcel of their environment so that the initial gains of FPE arenot eroded. This study underscores the need for interaction between the vari-ous environments for effective schooling and subsequent education of the chil-dren in the FPE era. Overall, FPE has achieved much, but there are limitationsand great risk of reversals in the gains caused by dropout. The governmentneeds to find innovative ways of tackling the chronic poverty in order toensure access to school for the poor in the slums, even in the era of FPE.
AcknowledgementsWe thank Dr Evangeline Nderu for having led the data collection process. All thestaff of the Education Research Team for their invaluable support in contribution atvarious stages of the data collection and writing process. We thank all the studyparticipants and all whose work and effort have contributed to the production ofthis manuscript.
Notes1. For description of the study sites refer to Mudege, Zulu and Izugbara (2008).2. Boma is a sheng word that is commonly used by the slum residents to refer to
the particular sites where garbage from across Nairobi is dumped.3. Koch is a pseudonym for one of the sites of data collection for APHRC.4. Jeri is also one of the sites for data collection for APHRC.
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Appendix 1. In-depth interview guide for the dropout children
1. I am interested in learning about some of the experiences you had as apupil before you left school and what has been happening in your lifesince then. Maybe you could start by telling me the name of the lastschool you were in.
2. What kind of school was it?3. How long were you at the school?4. What grade/class were you in at the time you left?5. What reasons made you leave school? Please explain6. From what you have told me what would you say was the main reason
why you left school?7. Whose decision was it for you to leave school? Tell me how it happened.8. What do you remember about the teachers at the school? What were they
like?9. I would like to learn a little bit about what the community was like when
you were in school. What kind of things happen in this community thatmade it hard for you to go to school?
10. What kinds of things used to happen at home that made it hard for you togo to school? What sorts of things happened that made it hard to do wellin school?
11. What were you doing at home to help your family/parents? What elsewas happening at home?
12. What kinds of things did your parents/guardians do to help you stay inschool and do well in school?
13. What has life been like for you since you left school?14. Given a chance, how interested would you be in going back to school?
Please explain.
Appendix 2. Focus-group discussion guide
1. What would you say are the main reasons why children in this communitydrop out of school?
2. Are the reasons why boys drop out similar to or different from the reasonswhy girls drop out? Please explain.
3. Are the reasons that older children drop out similar to those of youngerchildren? Please explain.
4. Do you think there is a difference between the lives of those that remainin school and those that leave? Please explain further.
5. Now let us focus on children from this community who have neverattended school. What would you say are the main reasons they havenever been to school?
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6. Are the reasons why they do not attend the same for boys and girls or arethey different? Please explain.
7. What about older children: are the reasons they do not attend school simi-lar to or different from those of younger children? Please explain.
8. Do you think there is a difference between the lives of those children whoare in school and those that leave? Please explain further.
9. Would you say that youth in this community use drugs and other sub-stances and alcohol? If so, what substances are most commonly used?How do the youth access them? At what ages do they begin to use thesesubstances? Would you say that this has a direct effect on school atten-dance and drop out?
10. Whose role do you think it is to ensure that children do not drop out ofschool?
11. What can be done at the community level to ensure children go toschool?
12. Some of you are parents of school-going children. Thinking about yourpersonal experiences with keeping your children in school, what advicewould you give to parents to help them keep their children in school?
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