EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE ON PERFORMANCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL IN KAPYEMIT WARD, TURBO CONSTITUENCY, UASIN-GISHU COUNTY.





BY
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14




A RESEARCH PROJECTSUBMITED TO THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SOCIOLOGY



MAY, 2014

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this project is my original work and that it has not been presented in any other university or institution for academic credit.

Signature...............................................­..... Date...................................
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14






SUPERVISOR
This project has been submitted for examination with my approval as university supervisor
DR. W. O. ABUYA
Signature..................................................­.. Date....................................




DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my Dad, Mom, my sister Lydia and my lovely brother Dun who contributed in one way or another to make this project to be successful.


















ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank all individuals who contributed and sacrificed their time towards completion of this project.
To my supervisor, for the guidance and support in the development of this research project, His advice and criticism made this project what it is.
Thanks to colleagues and friends for their suggestions, advice and encouragement. To all of you may God bless you abundantly for your tireless effort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Page
DECLARATION i
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURE viii
ABSTRACT ix
CHAPTER ONE 10
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 10
1.1 Background of the Study 10
1.2 Research Questions 13
1.3 Research Objectives 13
1.4 Justification of the Study 13
1.5 Significance of the Study 14
1.6 Scope of the Study 15
1.6.1Assumptions of the Study 16
CHAPTER TWO 17
LITERATURE REVIEW 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Common Forms of Child Abuse 17
2.2.1 Child ****** Abuse 17
2.2.2 Physiological or Emotional Abuse 17
2.2.3 Physical Abuse 18
2.2.4 Child Neglect or Abandonment 18
2.2.4.1 Physical Neglect 19
2.2.4.2 Educational Neglect 19
2.2.4.3 Medical Neglect 19
2.2.5 Child Fatalities 20
2.3 How Child Abuse Affects Academic Performance 20
2.3.1 Child Abuse and Academic Performance 20
2.3.2 Child Abuse and School Image 23
2.3.3 Child Abuse and Dropout Rate 25
2.4 Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 26
2.4.1 Role of Public Regulation 26
2.4.1.1 Nurturing and Attachment 27
2.4.1.2 Social Connections 27
2.5 Theoretical Framework 27
2.5.1 Learning Theory 28
2.5.1.1 Relationship with the Study 28
2.5.2 Family Dysfunction Theory 29
2.5.2.1 Relationship with the Study 29
CHAPTER THREE 30
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 30
3.0 Introduction 30
3.1 Site Description 30
3.2 Research Design 30
3.3.1 Target Population 30
3.3.2 Sample Size and Sampling Procedure 31
3.4 Description of Research Instruments 32
3.4.1 Research Instrument 32
3.4.1.1 Questionnaire 32
3.5 Data Collection Procedure 32
3.5.1 Validity and Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.1 Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.2 Validity 33
3.6 Data Analysis and Presentation 33
CHAPTER FOUR 35
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 35
4.0 Introduction 35
4.1 Background Information 35
4.1.1 Age of the Respondents 35
4.1.2 *** of the Respondents 35
4.1.3 Education Level of the Respondents 36
4.1.4 Marital Status 36
4.2 Specific Information 37
4.2.1 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 37
4.2.2 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 38
4.2.3 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 41
CHAPTER FIVE 43
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 43
5.0 Introduction 43
5.1 Summary of the findings 43
5.2 Discussion of the Findings 44
5.3 Conclusion 45
5.4 Recommendations 46
REFERENCES 47

LIST OF TABLES & FIGURES
Table 3.1 Target population 32
Table 3.1 Sample size 33
Table 4.1 Age of the Respondents 36
Table 4.2 *** of the Respondents 37
Table 4.3 Education Level of the Respondents 37
Table 4.4 Marital Status 38
Table 4.5 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 38
Table 4.6 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 40
Figure 4.1 Views of the Pupils on Abuse 41
Table 4.7 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 42





















ABSTRACT
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of child abuse on school performance in Primary Schools in Kapyemit ward, Uasin-Gishu County. The objectives of the study were: To assess the impacts of child abuse on academic performance; to determine the effects of child abuse on schools image, to identify the impacts of child abuse on pupil drop out rate, to investigate the effects of child abuse on pupil transition rate. The study employed a survey study design. The study targeted 160 respondents which includes; 5 Head Teachers, 40 Teachers, 70 Pupils and 35 parents of which a sample size of 48 was obtained from using 30%. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting the head teachers while simple random sampling technique will be used to select the teachers, Pupils and parents who formed the respondents of the study. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and presented in form of tables, percentages and frequency. The study helped in the understanding of the effects of child abuse on the school performance, the realization of the roles parents and teachers play in the curbing of child abuse among pupils and raising awareness on the same.
 
CHAPTER ONE
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.1 Background of the Study
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The effects can appear in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, and may affect various aspects of an individual's development (e.g., physical, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral). These effects range in consequence from minor physical injuries, low self-esteem, attention disorders, and poor peer relations to severe brain damage, extremely violent behavior, and death. In extreme cases, child abuse affects the performance of schools in the affected region (Daniel, 1978).
Performance refers to how students deal with their academic studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers. Performance is also the ability of a school to portray a good image which can influence the public (Decastro, 1978). There are several factors that influence the performance of a school at large, however, there is a critical factor that most researchers have avoided to discuss, and child abuse has been a crucial factor that has contributed to children’s dismal performance. Apart from children’s personal intelligence, child abuse is among then key factors contributing to poor performance of learners. Child abuse can lead to school dropping, emotional trauma or can even be fatal, hence destructing or even terminating the educational ambitions of a child. (Harris, 2005)
Worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2000) approximately 40 million children are subjected to child abuse each year. According to Human Rights Watch (2001) about 30% of all severely disabled children relegated to special homes in the Ukraine died before they reached 18 years of age. UNICEF estimates that two million children died as a result of armed conflict during a recent 10-year period and that another six million were injured or disabled. In Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, over 6.5 million children annually are exposed to unwanted ****** materials over the internet; over 1.7 million of these report distress over exposure to these materials. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. Each year, approximately one million children around the world are introduced into commercial ****** exploitation despite this problem; these developed countries have put measures to curb the vice. Rehabilitation schools have been formed and introduction of counseling centers as well. Despite the prevalence of child abuse in this developed nations they narrowly affect the academic performance since there are organizations put in place to curb the situation e.g. child associations, guidance and counseling institutions, and school based counseling programs (Giles, 2001)
Concern for victims of child abuse in Africa expressed by the African network of the International Society for The Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) which gave five main presentations of child abuse: child labor, street wandering, ****** abuse, child battering and abandonment (Elma, 1977). Child labor according to the international labor organization (ILO), about 10 million children less than 15years in Africa are in formal employment, working long hours with poor pay and are exposed to substantial health hazards. Wandering of children refers to children, usually unkempt and with delinquent propensities, living rough in town. The reasons for children taking to the street remain poorly understood particularly in relation to factors in the child rather than parental hostility and economic (Dubowitz, 2002)
****** abuse is another. For example, arranged under-age marriages are common in some parts of the continent and doubt was often expressed as to whether a young girl fully gave consent to being betrothed (Galdsone, 1965). Prevalence rates in Africa are very difficult to ascertain because of the fear of disclosure by victims and lack of proper documentation. Most of the girls by reasons of shame fear or surprisingly respect for their usually older perpetrators. Physical battering is also eminent. Physical abuse of children is widely claimed to berate in the third world; however, there are anecdotes from east Africa skeletal frame or localized body areas of all first attendees aged 0-12 years at this hospital during the four-year period 1 January 1987 to 31 December 1990 (Garbarino, 1975). Sixty-nine of these reports reveals evidence of multiple bone fractures wither without evidence of rib or skull fracture. Abandonment of children to roam around the streets in what we call street children is also eminent in Africa, though valid and adequate information on abandonment are difficult to obtain due mainly to failure of offending parents to show up out of guilt, shame, judicial repercussions or a combination of these. However, some euro-American missionaries identified inter alia breech birth. (Erickson, 2003)
Child protection measures in Kenya are currently not implemented effectively and fully (Galdstone, 1965). Compliance with such legislation would increase if the magnitude of the problem and better knowledge about the factors that put children at risk was available. Additionally, involving stakeholders, especially agencies charged with protection, as well as involving affected children, will highlight the issues and thereby promote adherence to protection policies. Kenyan children, child activists and children organizations are pinning their hopes on the implementation of the Children’s Act to improve the lot of the nation’s youth. The Act, which came into effect on 1 March 2002, puts in place full safeguards for the rights of the child. Its passage was a giant stride in harmonizing the national laws with international agreements which Kenya has signed such as the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 2002)
There is hope that the new legislation will dramatically change the inattention, neglect and abuse towards child rights. The Act outlaws any form discrimination of children, and forbids Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child prostitution, and child labor, among other forms of abuse. The Children’s Act has immensely improved the lives of many Kenyan children plagued with high illiteracy levels, frequent **** cases and child labor since it guarantees children the right to health and medical care, provision of which is the responsibility of the parents, the extended family and the government (Erickson, 2005).
Cases of child abuse in Uasin-Gishu region have been so eminent in the recent years ((Kenya Media Report, 2004). In the year 2010 and the year 2011, there was a program started to rehabilitate this behavior. This problem is clearly evident when you first arrive in Eldoret town, it is among the towns in the country with the highest number of abandoned children who keep on moving from one Centre to another seeking help from passersby. Parents have developed behaviors of abandoning their children and deliberately sending them to the town so that they can benefit from their borrowing. So to say this has led to child labor in this region. High profile cases of school dropouts have been recorded regarding the environs of this region. Young school children from different locations in Eldoret converge in town to persuade people to offer them financial assistance. Some attend school in numbered days and decide to spend some good number of days out of school.
The communities and societies around tend to assume this situation and term it as norm. A few who might seem concerned lack cooperation from the rest. This has adversely affected the performance of most of schools, hence leading to poor living standards of the people and a poisoned future of a young citizen. The problem has affected learners in regions like many areas in Uasin-Gishu County. It has really affected child development and affected their attendance and performance in school. Little intervention measures has been taken to advocate the holistic development of the children. It was to this reason that the researcher conducted the research in the named above region
1.2 Research Questions
The study was guided by the following questions;
1) What is the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward?  
2) What are some of the proposed strategies that schools can employ to curb child abuse?
1.3 Research Objectives
The study was guided by the following research objectives;
1) To identify the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward.
2) To identify proposed strategies that can be employed to help curb child abuse.
1.4 Justification of the Study
It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate child abuse prevention into separate categories. For instance, strategies on the societal level include increasing the “value” of children, increasing the economic self-sufficiency of families, discouraging corporal punishment and other forms of violence, making health care more accessible and affordable, expanding and improving coordination of social services, improving the identification and treatment of psychological problems and alcohol and drug abuse, providing more affordable child care and preventing the birth of unwanted children.
Very little analysis has been done to estimate the total cost of preventing child abuse and neglect or the long-term social costs of not preventing it. There is now a move to situate child abuse and neglect within the continuum of intervention which addresses multiple aspects of family behaviors. The efficacy of tackling portions of the problem of child abuse apart from broader societal needs is not known. And, perhaps prevention can only come in tandem with efforts to reduce poverty, improve health care and make children’s issues a national priority. However, despite these constraints, evaluations of prevention programs can be improved by coming to terms with definitions of key varia

Nothingness.
Imagine nothingness.
That nothingness which is nothing of the nothingness we are all familiar with:
Not that nothingness which is nothing but empty space and time
Like when you open an empty room.
No.
That nothingness where nothing truly exists:
Not space,
Not even time.

A singular point.
Imagine a singular point.
The ultimate singular point that contains all possible points
In the development of the universe
Come out and expand
From the birthing of time, the instance of The Big Bang,
(Which by the way is not a large explosion, as the words imply, but a silent rapid expansion)
Pushing the envelope
Where nothingness begins.

Chance.
Imagine chance.
The random occurrence of events:
Of fundamental particles colliding and uniting
Or annihilating each other,
Giving rise to protons, neutrons and electrons;
Giving rise to the periodic table,
To compounds, both organic and inorganic,
To macromolecules.

Billions of years.
Imagine billions of years
Gone by,
And billions of galaxies filling the sky:
Stars and quasars and pulsars
Planets and comets and meteors
***** nilly hurtling through
Dark matter and ever expanding space,
Yet inanimate still
,
A single cell.
Imagine a single cell
Form inexplicably so,
In a staggeringly highly improbable way
As carbon molecules combine,
Start to throb and pulsate:
Chance bringing forth life
In a barren and otherwise
Lifeless universe.

Consciousness
Imagine consciousness
Purposive, willful, deliberate

Feelings
Imagine feelings
Love, compassion, hatred

Imagine all in a universe that came out of itself from nothingness.

It is hard, of course,
For after all, we are creatures of somethingness!

But at this point
You must have seen the Point
Of all the ramblings and turns in the trajectory of my thought
Tracing the evolutionary course of the universe
From nothingness and that singular point
That without God
All things are
After all
Pointless!
.
And so,
Let us not deplore, as a great poet once did,
That this world “so various, so beautiful, so new
Hath no joy, nor love, nor light
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…”
For what else should we expect
Of a cold, unfeeling universe?

What?
Give us some Novocain?

The padlock on the continuous barnstorm of a transcendent time whose bunkum is transmuted consciousness aligning with parallax to a congruent worldview is not axiomatic but certainly a veridical property of reality. The universe is as much concept as percept and both properties of consciousness that lead to adaptive behavior are tethered to the eccentricity of the observer rather than the oblong nature of the observed where errors in prima facie judgments delineate the saplings of humanity to beaze under the proctored sunlight of an eternal sunshine that withers seldom to the whims of capricious arbitrage of those whose hubris exceeds the limits of the intellectual frontier because they are gilded with bricolage mentalities that scaffold the skeletonized worldview rather than apprehending the concretism and synthetic arraignment of interrogable reality in a manner that acknowledges the factitious intersection of pioneering understanding and the corporeal existence of realities both transcendent in spatiotemporal mapping and reversible propinquity to the sensible acquisition of tangible knowledge. I contest the worldview of many philosophers as a callow retread of basic logic whose ambition is underserved by a desire for prolix pellucidity rather than cogent succinct promethean formulations that dare to muster the herculean task of demystification even if the entropy of formulation is always flawed by the jaundice of the observers rather than the disdain of the observable consensus. We swing by a filipendulous thread that dangles speculation and reifies the blinkered piebald world of spotty concatenations among neurons recognizing that incomplete associations become the staples of philosophies that are precarious in some logical foundation but sturdy enough to weather the vagaries of the bluster of mendicants who verge on comprehension but pale in comparison to the monolithic edifice of so-called truth when the defalcation of figureheads supplants the clerisy as the new proctor of knowledgeable assertion. I contend that foofaraw is a primeval instinct of community ecology that expedites the balkanization of otherwise unitive properties of society and ravages them with bickering based on clashing predilections that are bellicose and combative rather than irenic and balmy. The acerbic fates of many leads to a rudimentary pessimism or a chary optimism that chides against the fortified exegesis of divinity that can be both proclaimed and stultified for its latticework properties of buttressing society in a permutation that is nimble in some respects but too turgid and rigid in others. The goal of humanity is to become a pliable instrument of a pliable universe that does not rely on buzzword dogmatism or the masquerade of hollow punditry but that relies on self-reliant principles for ascertaining veracity and impugning mendaciloquence with vigilant alacrity rather than casual sportsmanship that reaches finality only upon the handshakes of a battle waged that concedes the impotence of gladiatorial spectatorship as just a gambit of the half-witted cockney witticisms and shibboleths of sportive diversion rather than consequential and decisive reckonings with the subaudition that undergirds all events of any consequence with either a clinched victory or a callow defeatism of a futilitarian worldview that stoops to reconciliation only to propitiate antagonism and buffer against the truculent brunt of weaponized coercion to checkered flags that arbitrate the outcome of a binary polarity of humanized affairs. The majesty of creation is that reversible boundaries can be permeated in a bi-directional manner through the artifice of concerted thought rather than the orchestration of a linear traipse through the deserts of an inclement fate won immediately when projected upon the tangent of any given velocity at any point of acceleration away from the targeted impetus that grants only a partial vantage, a cantle of reality that is fragmented and piecemeal rather than circular and emergent. The most dire battle that humanity faces is the attrition of circumstance by the purposive declarations of imperious authority that seeks to muzzle the ingenuity of many for the deliciation of the few creating an accidia among the clerical institute of thinkers that imposes hogra that few people can grapple with that they are marooned into a cloister that reaps fewer rewards for an ascendant intellect than a virulent libido can clutch with predatory gallops against the also-rans that fight for carnality rather than the ethereal principles lingering within the grasp of many if it became a cynosure of worthy heralded acclaim. We witness the mass fecklessness of giftedness as a shackle of those whose plaudits come intrinsically fortified but sustain none of the abuses that the pedestrians would like to obtrude upon enlightenment to curtail and abridge the art of invention like the coagulation of blood to rob the vitality of throbbing pulse of importunate self-discovery of its macroscopic vista and its telescopic foresight about the future hodgepodge of a recursive fractalized reality besieged by the enemy of linear logical formulations implemented by ivory tower psychologists to muzzle the empowerment of abstruse language in order to make savory the nostrum of the apothecaries of delegated truth bereaved of recourse beyond certain leaps they cannot fathom well enough to flicker with even a faint transient wisdom that is designed to be amenable only to the supernal nature of ideation rather than the caprice of bedazzled humanitarianism. We need to forswear the -isms that flicker with doctrinaire dogmatism and flirt with forceful harangues that exhort a codified message and launch veridical properties of recondite etherealism into an immovable orbit whose inertia can broadcast a singular message of recoil against puritanism in science or skepticism in faith. The bedrock of this message is the deployment of useful extravagance without inordinate delay, the drivel of malcontent transmogrified into the prattle of estimable giants that have stature among the leviathan enough to recriminate against the autarky of self-smug simpletons that infest the world with barbarous indecencies and crude prepossessions that abortively crumple when met with the acerbic teleological gravity of ulterior consequence rather than blossom under the siroccos of manufactured wind designed for windfalls that always create a crestfallen aftermath from the anticlimax of understanding leading to the desiccation of consequence and the engorgement of precedence. These frangible realities become buoyant because the physics of the public dialectic insulates the creaky rickety vestiges of canonical knowledge as a sworn precedent inviolable and immune as a building block of all scholasticism, a retread of parchment recycled over and over again to entrench the past as the titanic vehicle that dictates the future of thought even though the porous inconsistencies of the vagrants of crude formulation make such a vessel less seaworthy than scientism and dogmatism of the monolith would have you believe to be true. The querulous quips of the uninformed predominate with such clutter that the armamentarium against useful idiocy is stagnated into a resigned accord with infernal subjugation of the public volition to insubordinate against a system of parochial enslavement rather than a catholic enlightenment whose universalism of principle ensures a steadfast society guided by scruples rather than undermined by the prickly thorns of abrasive contrition and the magnetism of empathic concern that sabotages the clarity of intelligence and provides a welter in the place of a well-arrayed code of peculiar but defiant distinctiveness that acts as the splinter that cracked the intangible but refractory borders of human inclination and demonstrated the sheer force of golden consistency rather than fickle withering resolve. I exhort and implore the world to heed the best minds that realize the syncretism is answerable to contradiction rather than scuttled from beneath by the impudence of its assertions against the common propriety when it stakes controversy as a gamble to aver the veracity of worldviews that violate orthpraxy with gusto as a brazen gallantry to rescue a foundering planet that seeks disequilibrium in harmony rather than an equilibrated sensibility that is proud to discriminate properly and honestly to clinch fact rather than kowtow to factitious slumber of somniferous kumbaya that is too deferent to maxims that are unduly polite only because charisma supersedes genius in its efficacy to mobilize people to fulfill their roles. With the miscegenation of justice that occurs because of expedience we find holes in many legalistic precedents because they anoint pettifoggery over sensible jurisdiction and face a leaky and ramshackle fate to foment paternalism and divide the clerisy among certain key considerations in order to save face rather than to impose a clarity of orderly supervision that seeks to dissipate the embroiled spiderwebs of dodgy prevarication and quacksalver logic to once and for all ascertain the truth that lurks beyond the primal jaundice of Kafkaesque confusion.

I would like to believe that someday I will find my way home.
A place, no, a feeling that I can emphatize with wholeheartedly.
Somewhere where my skin fits perfectly free to roam,
Where tears that stream down would end abruptly.
A man is free to dream to be with whom he wants to be,
Perhaps in heavens of whispers on secret room escapades,
Or on the free road with festive decors that lets an unending flow of glee,
Bursts of joy that would make someone hopeless feel saved.
The waves of the oceans of uncertainties will be crashed,
By the roots and foundation of courage and liberty,
The winds of shame will be hushed,
It is time for the well of hatred, imprisonment, and drama to feel thirsty.
All in good time will we reach the moon ever evasive,
We aren't fools who won't stand true to what we desire.
We are what we are - purposive.
We are everything except people who tire.

May this year too modest seem, 

 to all your achievements hold

May your joy from time past 

 increase tenfold 

May you become your own

purposive hesh

And at time discover wonders afresh

You have much to give, remember to accept

The greatness about you, is in your depth

May luck and faith, into your life integrate

May you always experience the sweetest of fates

At this world's behest

I wish for you, and you the same deserve,

Nothing, but the very best...