Performance of Universal Secondary Education: A Case study of Kayunga District

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine Performance of Universal Secondary Education a case study of Kayunga District. The objectives of the study were to examine the effect of Universal Secondary Education on the proportion of girls to boys in Kayunga District, the contribution of universal secondary education on reducing school dropout of girls in Kayunga District and the relationship between performance of USE schools and those without USE programmes in Kayunga District. The findings of the study on the effect of Universal Secondary Education on the proportion of girls to boys that the coefficient of proportion of girls to boys (0.130) indicated that a unit increase in USE funds will on average lead to 0.130 increases in the number of girls enrolled in schools to boys and since the P- value (0.001) is less than 0.05 the confidence level we reject the null hypothesis and conclude with the alternative that the proportion of girls to boys is independent of the introduction of Universal Secondary Education. The findings on the contribution of universal secondary education on reducing school dropout of girls revealed that Universal Secondary Education has led to provision of education to children in poor families, USE programmes have reduced in the distances which were being travelled by girls to go to schools. findings on the relationship between performance of USE schools and those without USE programmes found the correlation coefficient (0.731) implied that there is a strong positive correlation of 73.1% between performance of students in schools with USE and those without USE programme and since the P-value (0.004) is less than 0.05 the level of significance, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude with the alternative that there is a significant relationship between performance in schools with USE and those without USE. The study recommends that Government should increase on the amount of funds being put in the Universal Secondary Education, since this reduces on the number of children dropping out of school because of school fees, the school administration should recruit teachers who are qualified so that they don’t scare away children by practicing their professional ethics and teachers should be encouraged to give courage to school going children in schools with Universal secondary education and the Government should release the USE funds in time before the term begins as this will aid proper planning for the schools before the term begins.