Educational attainment is considered the most egalitarian basis for the
allocation of rewards in most societies. Consequently, access to education
determines the ultimate life chances of an individual. When such opportunities
are inequitably distributed, educational attainment potentially becomes the
instrument for increasing inequality rather than the converse. One of the
obvious manifestations of inequality between social and income groups in
Kenya is evident in terms of the access they have to quality secondary
education. Over time, this trend may lead to greater inequality in income, in
wealth and in power, hence the need to establish empirically how the different
socioeconomic groups are represented in public secondary schools. The
purpose of the study was to investigate enrolment in public day secondary
schools by different socioeconomic groups. The main objective of the study
was to obtain and compare socioeconomic profiles of public day secondary
schools in terms of the income group of family, the occupation of the
household head, the formal educational attainment of the household head, the
religious affiliation of the students? family and the place of residence of the
student.
The study followed a survey design. The target population of the study was all
the public day secondary schools – at that time 25 in number - in Nairobi
Province. Sampling followed a two-stage design comprising first, stratified
sampling and then purposive sampling. The schools in the sample were first
stratified by type - boys?, girls? and mixed day schools. The best and poorest
performing schools in each category were then purposively selected. This led
to a sample size of six schools. The number of students sampled in each school
was ten per cent of the school?s total enrolment. The questionnaire was
administered to 275 students. Twelve administrators were also included in the
survey. The study targeted form two students. The research instruments were
questionnaires for students and administrators, and interview schedules with
teacher in charge of guidance and counselling or a senior teacher/ senior
teachers of the schools in the sample. The questionnaire for students was
subjected to a pilot run. This involved administering the questionnaire to ten
students in Lang?ata Secondary School. This school was then omitted from the
sample. Adjustments were then made on the questionnaire before it was
administered to the students in the schools sampled. In the study, qualitative
data was generated. This comprised of the opinions of administrators
regarding access by the different socioeconomic groups and the responses of
the students to questionnaire. The software programme SPSS Version 12 for
Windows was used to analyse the data generated. Frequency distributions of
the socioeconomic categories across the schools by quality and by type were
obtained. The results of the study indicated that there was a high
representation of students from the upper- middle and lower-middle income
groups in public day secondary schools in Nairobi Province. The study also
found that when schools were analysed according to quality, the upper income
group dominated in the school of best quality. In addition, the study found that
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in terms of occupations, the offspring of professionals, entrepreneurs and
associate professionals predominated in the school of best quality. The
recommendations of the study are that access to public day secondary schools
in Nairobi Province by children from the low-income group, those living in
urban slums and those whose parents have primary education or lower should
be facilitated through compensatory measures.