Relationship Between Government Ban on Early Marriages and Girls' Completion of Secondary Education in Narok West Sub-County, Narok County

Abstract

This paper examined the relationship between the ban on early marriage and completion of girls’ secondary education in Narok West Sub-County, Narok County, Kenya. Despite the efforts towards the provision of universal basic education, the Kenyan government continues to experience a number of challenges related to the completion of girls in secondary education.  The paper is anchored on Adam’s Equity Theory. The descriptive correlational design was employed, and all students (3000 female students) and 653 teachers in the 7 girls’ secondary schools in Narok West Sub-County formed the target population. Purposive sampling was used to select all the 7 girls’ secondary schools in Narok West Sub-County. 1078 students and 182 teachers drawn from the seven secondary schools constituted the sample size. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The instruments’ reliability was determined using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and the test-retest technique. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, and the hypothesis was tested using Pearson Correlation analysis. The results indicated that the relationship between the ban on early marriage and girls’ completion of secondary education in Narok West Sub-County was positive and significant (r(83)=0.254; p=.019). This implies that enforcing minimum age-of-marriage laws and banning early marriage can improve educational attainment for girls in Narok County.