Attendance dilemma and its consequence on the academic performance of student’s in public mixed secondary schools, Kisii, Kenya

The deteriorating academic performance of students in the various national examinations in Kenya in recent times provoked researcher to undertake this kind of study, to examined the school attendances patterns, causes of attendance challenge and their impact on the academic performance of Secondary Schools’ students, and interventions to curb this vice in Kisii County, Kenya. To accomplish this goal, scores of attendance and examinations of 2372students from 30 public mixed secondary schools were collected. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested in this respect while descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were adopted for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that; lack of academic requirements, household chores, disinterest in schooling, lack of lunch programme in school, sexual pressures in school, travelling time to school, poor health, orphan’s status, peer influence and cruel punishment at school were the top ten basis of students’ missing classes in mixed public secondary schools in Kisii county, Kenya. Further, the study also showed that majority of learners’ miss up to 40 days per year. Research recommends the functionality of tools to measure absenteeism in the government organs, policy makers, school managers, media, parents, and the well-meaning public to accurately monitor, identify early and intervene appropriate mitigation strategies, and possibly a combination of strategies, will be necessary to address the range of contributing factors in student attendance.