School management practices and girl child retention in Mbale municipality secondary schools, Mbale district, Uganda.

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study focused on investigating the influence of school management practices on girl-child retention in secondary schools of Mbale municipality. In an attempt to investigate this influence, the study focused on discipline management practices, school facility management practices, and instructional management practices as the study variables. The main focus of this study was to investigate how these variables influence girl-child retention, transition and completion. The study adopted a cross sectional descriptive survey design. Teachers, head teachers and female students were considered as the population of the study. A total of 400 respondents were taken to be the sample of the study. In selecting the respondents of the study, stratified, simple random and purposive samplings were used. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used in the analysis of the quantitative data whereas thematic analysis was used for the qualitative data. Findings of the study revealed that discipline management does not make any significant contribution in the prediction of girl-child retention. However, further findings revealed that school facility management and instructional management made significant contribution in the prediction of girl-child retention. Among these two variables that made significant contribution, school facility management was seen as the major contributing factor in the prediction of girl-child retention. Based on the findings of the study, it was therefore concluded that girl-child retention was significantly influenced by school facility management and instructional management but not discipline management. The study therefore recommended that schools should adopt counseling mechanism to shape and model girl child behaviours and provide physical facilities and encourage teachers to use wide varieties of teaching methods during the teaching and learning process in order to enhance completion and transition rate among girl students.