Effects Of Gender On Academic Performance In Kenyapublic Secondary Schools: A Case Study Of Tharaka District Public Secondary Schools

ABSTRACT

Performance disparity between boys and girls in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education

(KCSE) examination was used to determine the impact gender effects have on academic

performance in Tharaka District. The number of girls qualifying for tertiary colleges and especially

the university, from the public secondary schools is dismal in comparison to that of boys. This is

evident as KCSE results for the last five years (2004-2008) show that between these years, 30 boys

qualified for the public universities against 6 girls.

Tharaka District is semi-arid in nature and rainfall is hardly enough hence the only other source of

income to the community would be investment in education in both boys and girls for easier

poverty eradication. When academic performance is poor in girls, this reduces chances of poverty

alleviation in the semi-arid District by half hence leaving half of the households in the District

progressively below poverty levels. This sparks the mind of the researchers to find out why gender

affects academic performance and consequently come up with ways of improving the performance

for an economically empowered and better informed society.

Data was collected through observation, interviews and questionnaires as well as utilization of

professional data collected and analyzed by experts at the DEOs office - Tharaka District. Today,

although efforts are being made by the Ministry of Education - Kenya, to remove overloads and

difficult topics together with re-sequencing of concepts and skills in various academic disciplines

in what is now referred to as the new syllabus, gender disparity in academic performance still

persists. This necessitated a lot more to be done in terms of research out of which strong

recommendations to the Ministry of Education (MOE) and all stakeholders were made towards

change of teaching approaches in schools in order to curb the problem of gender effects in

academic performance in our Kenyan public secondary schools. Apart from the recommendations,

the findings were used as part of information useful for counseling against gender effects in academic performance.