Monitoring Pupils’ Academic Performance at Home through Parental Participation in Educational Activities: Focus on Public Primary Schools in Ainabkoi Sub-County

Abstract

Poor performance in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Examinations has often been attributed to a lack of parental participation in children’s academics. The claim that parents are not supportive of their children, especially at home, therefore holds water as researchers have established that parent involvement with their children's homework could have an influence on their academic performance. This paper draws our attention to a study conducted to investigate the influence of parental involvement in school work on pupils’ academic performance in public primary schools in Ainabkoi Sub County, Kenya. Joyce Epstein’s framework of six types of parent involvement guided the study adopting the ex-post facto research design. Targeting 2404 Class 8 pupils and 61 class teachers in Ainabkoi Sub County, the authors drew a sample of 331 class eight pupils through stratified simple random sampling while census approach was employed to involve all the class teachers in the selected schools. The modes of data collection used were questionnaire and interview schedule whose validity was ensured through pilot study and reliability by test-retest technique. Quantitative data was then analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics in the form of percentages, means and chi-square, to test the study hypothesis. It was found out that parental participation in educational activities at home (X²=8.196; p=0.017) had a positive and significant influence on academic performance in public primary schools. Qualitative data was presented thematically. The study recommends that parents should provide their children with the required learning materials, such as supplementary reading complements to improve their academic performance.