Perceptions of parents on the practice of private tuition in public learning institutions in Kenya

Abstract

The practice of private tuition outside normal class hours is a phenomenon which has prevailed in Kenyan basic learning institutions despite the repeated ban by the government. The purpose of the study was to establish parental perceptions on extra tuition in public schools in Kenya. Descriptive survey design was used for the study. A total of 40 parents purposively selected from a random sample of 10 schools in Makueni County participated in the study. Self administered structured questionnaires were used to collect data and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 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. The study found that parents had a favorable perception towards private tuition. Among the reasons for this favorable attitude towards the practice was that; private tuition helped towards improvement of children’s mean grade, improves overall school performance, facilitates syllabus coverage, leads to improvement on academic performance and in increasing knowledge in various subjects among others. Further, the findings revealed that gender of the parents does not influence their perceptions towards the practice of extra tuition (p>0.05). Similarly, the views of parents whose children participated in private tuition and those whose children did not participate in the practice were homogeneous and hence; not statistically significant (p>0.05). The study recommends that the Government of Kenya should not outlaw the practice; instead, the practice should be encouraged and taxed as is the case in Israel and Australia where in each, case, private tuition contributes to the revenues of these countries. Alternatively, the government has to overhaul the entire structure of education that places high premiums on examination grades for the practice to be controlled and to ensure children have time for leisure.