The effects of free primary education on barriers to universal access to education in Kawino location, Kisumu county, Kenya

Abstract

Free primary education programme was launched in Kenya to support realization of universal primary education. Despite the fact that free primary education programme is in place, the enrollment rate is of 73% in Kawino against the global enrollment target of 99%.This indicates that there still exist barriers to universal access to primary education in Kawino. The purpose of this study is establish barriers addressed by free primary education programme and ones not addressed. The main objective of the study is to establish the effect of Free Primary Education on universal access to primary education in Kawino location Kisumu County. The specific objectives are to establish barriers to universal access to primary education in Kawino location, to assess how free primary education program addresses barriers to universal access to primary education in Kawino location and to establish implementation challenges in removing barriers to universal access to primary education and ways of removing them. The study used a cross sectional survey study design. The target population was 12920 from which a sample size of 384 was drawn using quota sampling. The data was analyzed with the aid of descriptive statistics. The study established that 56.6% of respondents mentioned economic barriers, 20.8% mentioned FPE related barriers, 16.6% socio-cultural and 5.7% geographical barriers as the reasons why universal access to education had not been achieved. In addition it was established that free primary education only addressed 27.7% of the economic barriers. Additionally other barriers beyond economic are not addressed by Free Primary Education programme at all. Study further established that 100% of respondents mentioned major implementation challenges in removing barriers to universal access to primary education in Kawino as lack of adequate funding and delays in funds disbursement. The study concluded that the funding for Free Primary Education was inadequate because it was not able to address 72.7% of the economic barriers to primary education. It also concluded that free primary education programme does not address all barriers to primary education such as geographical and socio-cultural barriers. The study recommends that FPE education programme should be redesigned in order to cater for barriers that go beyond economic. Furthermore government budgetary increase on FPE programme and mobilization of sufficient resources should be in place.