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The number of orphaned children in third world countries is on the rise. These children
are facing so many challenges include lack of parental care, economic hardship in the
family, stigmatization, lack of learning materials, and child labour. This results into
school dropout, absenteeism, early pregnancies and marriages, immoral behavior and
poor performance in their studies. But now the government has introduced free education
policy thus this study intended to investigate the persisting and the new challenges facing
orphaned children to access and participate in secondary school education in Nyamagana
district. The study employed mixed research approach by which convergent research
design was used. Also the critical theory of education was used to guide the study. The
participants were; 4 heads of schools, 4 teachers dealing with orphaned children, 72
orphaned students, 8 orphaned children who are not enrolled in secondary school
education, 8 guardians and 4 street leaders. Data collection was done by the use of
questionnaires, interviews, document analysis and observations. Data analysis based on
themes and descriptive statistics with the help of Statistical Package for Social Science
(SPSS). However ethical implication was highly considered so as to meet the objectives
of study. The findings of the study revealed that despite the presence of free basic
education, which seems to increase the number of students from poor families, most of
the teachers, guardians, street leaders and the government did not have a well-established
scheme to identify and provide academic and financial support to orphaned children so
that they can be able to overcome the challenges which are still there. The study suggests
that all stakeholders should play their roles effectively to improve access and
participation of orphaned children in secondary school education. |
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