Perceived effects of extra tuition on academic performance in public secondary schools Matungulu Sub-County Machakos County

Abstract

The practice of extra tuition is a phenomenon which has prevailed in Kenyan schools despite the repeated ban by the government. The purpose of the study was to establish the perceived effects of extra tuition on academic performance in Matungulu Sub-County, Machakos County. Descriptive survey design was used for the study. 10 schools (representing 30% of the population) were randomly sampled for this study. A total of 250 respondents participated in the study. They included 10 principals (representing 30% of all the principals), 40 teachers (representing 10% of the total number of teachers), 160 students (representing 10% of all the students‟ population) and 40 parents (representing 2% of all the parents available).There was 100% response rate. Questionnaires were used as instruments for data collection. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data. All the null hypotheses were tested using the t-test for independence of means at a 0.05 level of significance. The analyzed data was presented in form of frequency tables, bar graphs, and pie charts. The study found that extra tuition is widely practiced in the schools studied. This was evidenced by the fact that 90% of the student respondents reported that extra tuition is offered in their schools. Regarding the decisions to have tuition, 52.5% of the students reported that extra tuition decisions are made by teachers. It was found out that 82% of the students, 85% of the teachers and 80% of the principals supported extra tuition. Some reasons advanced for the support of extra tuition were that it helps in early coverage of syllabus, in revision, to occupy students constructively, boosts the performance of individual students and to identify needs of individual learners among others. Observed t value revealed by the study indicated that perception scores of teachers and students were t (198) = -0.767, p=0.444, perception scores of teachers and principals were t (48) = -0.593, p=0.556 while perception scores of teachers and parents were t (78) = -0.848, p=0.556. This meant that statistically, there was no significant difference between the perception scores of students, teachers, principals and parents concerning extra tuition on academic performance. Among the key recommendations, were that there is need for the government to provide adequate educational resources like more teachers and textbooks and to reduce syllabus content to manageable levels. On areas for further research based on the findings of the study, there is need to find out if there is any relationship between extra tuition and academic performance.