Influence of Nomadic Pastoralism on Internal Efficiency of Public Secondary Schools in Narok South Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Education forms the basis upon which economic, social and political development of any nation is founded. As a basic human right, it is universally proclaimed by many countries of the world. Despite the efforts made by the government and other stakeholders to achieve Education For All (EFA) as outlined in the vision 2030, there are challenges of dropouts, repetition and low transition rates. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of nomadic pastoralism on internal efficiency in public secondary schools. The selected indicators of internal efficiency were dropout’s rates, repetition rates and transition rates. Ex-post facto research design was used in this study. This study was carried out in Narok South Sub-County due to its high prevalence of cultural practices that affect internal efficiency in education. The target population was 170 respondents comprising of (34) principals and (136) class secretaries in public secondary schools in Narok South Sub-County. Purposive sampling was used to select (31) principals while stratified sampling was used to select (124) class secretaries to form a sample size of 154. Data was collected using interview schedule for principals and questionnaire for the class secretaries. The data collected was analysed using statistical package for social science. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse background information while inferential statistics (poison regression) was used to determine influence of nomadic pastoralism on internal efficiency. Inferential statistics were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data was presented using frequency tables, pie charts and bar graphs. From the study results majority of the respondents were affected by cultural practices from the age of 10-24 years. All internal efficiency factors were influenced by nomadic pastoralism. Nomadic pastoralism had a significant influence on repetition rates (P-value = 0.000), transition rates (P-value = 0.002) and dropout rates (P-value = 0.008). The study recommends that the government and other stakeholders should enhance internal efficiency by creating awareness to parents on the retrogressive cultural practices such as nomadism in Narok South Sub-County. The ministry of education should increase the number of boarding schools in Narok South Sub-County in order to curb the influence of nomadic pastoralism thus increasing internal efficiency.

Key Words — Nomadic pastoralism, Internal efficiency, Education, Cultural practices, Dropout rates, Transition rate, Repetition rate.