Household socioeconomic conditions and secondary school dropout in Namayingo District, Uganda

Abstract

This study examined the effect of household SES on secondary school dropout in Namayingo District. The objectives of the study were to: analyze household socioeconomic conditions in Namayingo District, examine the level of dropout in secondary schools of Namayingo District, determine the relationship between household SES and student dropout and other factors that cause dropout. The study employed a cross-sectional design using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The study had a sample of 380 households randomly selected from 9 sub-counties of Namayingo District and 5 heads of secondary schools purposively selected, district education staff and district political leaders in the district. Validity of the instruments was measured using the content validity index and the average score was 82.5%, reliability was tested by piloting the questionnaire in two households which did not take part in the study and the value for alpha was 0.92. A questionnaire to the household head solicited quantitative data whereas an interview guide was used to solicit qualitative data from head teachers, education staff at the district and the district political executive. Quantitative data were edited, coded, and entered into Stata for electronic cleaning and data analysis while qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The objectives of the study were analyzed using descriptive, logistic regression at multivariate and chi-square at bivariate. For objective one, the descriptive results on household SES revealed that households with higher SES were able to maintain their children in schools as compared to their counterparts with lower SES. For objective two, the descriptive statistics revealed that 31% of the students dropped out of school. This implied that dropping out of school was dependent on the role of households and the SES of that household. For objective three, household SES significantly affected students drop out at (r2= .2556, p .0001), thus the null hypothesis that household SES index does not significantly affect student dropout was rejected; and the alternative hypothesis was accepted. The study recommends that; government should come up with more avenues for household heads to better their SES levels, there is need for sensitization of students about the importance of education in order to encourage them to endure and persist through education levels in a bid to reduce dropout rate and government should implement its policy statement of establishing a secondary school in every sub county to reduce on the distance students move to and from school.