School accessibility and students' attendance in secondary Schools in Kasese district, Uganda

Abstract

The study was about School Accessibility and Students' attendance in Secondary Schools in Kasese district. This study was prompted by the fact that whereas the introduction of Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme in Uganda had increased access to secondary education, students' absenteeism and late arrival was still apparent and it was indeed a serious problem resulting into poor students' attendance in secondary schools. The study was therefore to find out whether there was a significant relationship between school accessibility and students' attendance in secondary schools in Kasese district. It specifically examined the state of secondary school accessibility, the reasons for students' absenteeism and late arrival the relationship between school accessibility and students' attendance. the measures put in place by school administrators to control students' absenteeism and late arrival in secondary schools and to recommend strategies that could be adopted to overcome the problem of students' absenteeism and late arrival in secondary schools. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher employed a cross-sectional survey design of quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data from 19 secondary schools where semi-structured questionnaires were administered to a sample of 403 respondents comprised of 328 students, 59 teachers and 16 headteachers both male and female. The study established that students had difficulties in accessing secondary schools they traveled long distances to reach schools. The majority of them used poor means of transpo11 particularly footing. These factors resulted into students' absenteeism and late arrival at school hence poor attendance. The study further found out that was a negative correlation between the distances traveled by students from their homes to school and the total number of students that attended