Parent’s Level of Education and pupils’ reading readiness: A case of rural pre-schools in Kenya

This study explored the relationship between parents’ level of education and their children’s reading readiness achievement focusing on both parents’ level of education. The study adopted a descriptive research design which allowed for in-depth examination of the study variables. This study employed Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. The study adopted stratified random sampling to sample schools as public and private pre-primary schools, urban and rural schools. Systematic random sampling was used to further select the schools to participate in the study. Finally, 12% of the pupils were randomly chosen to be included in the study. The study selected 96 public Pre-Primary school pupils and 16 private pre-primary school pupils to participate in the study. Questionnaires enabled the researcher to collect data from the parents and reading readiness checklists were utilized to collect data from sampled pupils. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 20. The findings of the study revealed that the high level of parents education positively contributes to their children’s reading readiness achievement. Large co-relation was found between parents’ level of education and reading readiness achievement. On the basis of the findings, the study recommended introduction of awareness campaigns, use of social media for community education ad adult education programs.