Effects of Violence on Children’s Participation in Preprimary School Education in Nairobi City County, Kenya.

Abstract

Violence against childrenis a common problem worldwide that may include physical, psychological and sexual forms of ill treatment. In Kenya, different Acts of law have been enacted by the government to provide direction and support in protecting children to improve their participation in Pre-Primary Education. However, despite the efforts put in place,violence against children is still on the increase and unfortunately researches done have concentrated more on women and girls, yet both genders are at risk. The study therefore sought to assess the effects of violence on children‟s participation in pre-primary education in Nairobi City County. The theory that underpinned the study was the culture of violence theory. It emphasizes on violence as a product of sub-cultures, structures and systems in the society. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population was all pre-primary school children in Nairobi City County aged between 3-6 years. Multi-stage sampling technique was used whereby purposeful and simple random sampling procedures were used to identify the sample. Out of 207 public pre-schools, 21(10%) of them were sampled alongside 65 (10%) out of 657 pre-school teachers, 101 (10%) out of 1015 parents and 2(10%) of the Children Officers out of 17. Questionnaires were used to collect data from the study participants. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire was done during piloting. Content validity was specifically determined by ensuring that questionnaire items and content reviewed were in line with the objectives of the study. A criterion was adopted and modified where a four-point content validity index was used. Reliability of the instrument was tested through the use of split-half technique at 0.7 Spearman's rank order correlation coefficient. Data collected was coded and classified using SPSS computer package. Numerical data was analyzed using descriptive statistics involving frequencies, percentages, and means. Four hypotheses were tested using T-test for HO1and Pearson‟s Correlation Coefficient at a significance level of 0.05 for the other hypotheses. The main study findings showed that cases of violence against children reported and shared were higher for girls as compared to boys. This showed that girls were more vulnerable, although there was a growing trend among boys which indicated that they were also at risk. The findings also showed that majority of the respondents tended to hold backwhile a few of them shared cases of violence against children as compared with reported cases. Conclusions made were that violence against children was in existence and occurred in different form and influenced by different factors within the society. Recommendations were made to different stakeholders to ensure and maintain child friendly environments both in school and at home. Further research needs to be done to assess the implementation of the intervention strategies used to address violence against children in Nairobi City County and a replication of the current study in other counties to find out if similar or different trends exist.