Access to secondary schools education in uasin Gishu County in Kenya before and after the implementation of subsidized secondary education (sse)

This study sought to establish the difference in access to Secondary School education before and after implementation of Subsidized Secondary Education (SSE). Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect students’ data from thirteen public secondary schools in Uasin Gishu County in Kenya. The data was processed using descriptive statistics and the results’ significance determined using t- test at 95% confidence level. In the year 2006 and 2007 the total number of students in the thirteen schools was 2475 and 2639, respectively. This figures represented a 6.6% annual increment in the student’s enrolment. Following the implementation of SSE in the year 2008, the enrolment of students increased significantly (P<0.05) first to 2761 (4.6% annual increment) and then to 3233 (17.1% annual increment) in 2009. When the enrolment levels were compared between urban (758 and 1642 students in 2006-2009, respectively) and rural (715 and 872 students in the same years) schools, this study found that urban schools enrolled more students following the SSE implementation. The ratios of male to female students was 1.6:1, 1.7:1, 1.45:1 and 1.44:1 in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, respectively. These results showed that the number of female students increased significantly (p<0.05) as compared to the males following the implementation of SSE. In conclusion the findings of this study revealed that there was a general increase in the students’ enrolment level with the urban schools enrolling more students than the rural schools following the implementation of SSE. Though the SSE appeared to have enhanced female students’ access to secondary school education the enrolment of boys was still higher in Eldoret East UasinGishu County.