Abstract:
The practice of extra tuition is a phenomenon which has prevailed in Kenyan secondary
schools despite the repeated ban by the government. The purpose of the study was to
establish the perceived effect of extra tuition by teachers and students on academic
performance in public secondary schools in Machakos County, Kenya. Descriptive survey
design was used for the study. The target population was all public secondary schools’
teachers and students in Machakos County. Ten (10) schools were randomly sampled and a
total of 200 respondents including 40 teachers and 160 students participated. Questionnaires
were used for data collection. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to
analyze the data. The null hypothesis was tested using the t-test for independence of means
at a 0.05 level of significance. Study findings were that extra tuition is widely practiced and
that both students and teachers supported extra tuition. Some reasons advanced for the
support were that extra tuition helps in early coverage of syllabus, revision, and boosts the
performance of individual students. Observed t value indicated that perception scores of
teachers and students were t (198) = -0.767, p=0.444. This means that there was no
significant difference between the perception scores of students and teachers concerning
extra tuition on academic performance. The study recommends among others that there is
need to reduce syllabus content to manageable levels.