Socio-Cultural Inhibitions to School-Aged Children Access to Basic Education in Akwa Ibom, and Rivers States of Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the socio-cultural inhibitions to school-aged children access to basic education in Akwa Ibom and Rivers States of Nigeria. Two research questions and two hypotheses were tested and answered in the study. The study adopted the descriptive survey design, with the population as the 2899 UBE primary and junior secondary schools in the two states. These schools have a corresponding number of 2899 school administrators who acted as the participants in the study, from which 1159 (representing 40%) were selected as sample, using the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. The subjects of the study responded to an eighteen item instrument titled ‘Socio-Cultural Inhibitions to School-Aged Children Access to Basic Education Scale (SCISACABES), designed by the researchers, in the modified 4-point Likert scale model, with a reliability index of 0.85, obtained using Cronbach Alpha Statistics. Mean and standard deviation were used in answering the research questions while z.test statistics was used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study show that social issues ranging from language of instruction to high crime rate and cultural issues ranging from early marriage to strong entrepreneurial spirit among a people inhibit access to basic education of school-aged children in Akwa Ibom and Rivers States of Nigeria. The study also found no significant difference between mean ratings of the respondents on the social inhibitions to school-aged children access to basic education and a significant difference between the mean rating of the respondents on the cultural inhibitions to school-aged children access to basic education in Akwa Ibom and Rivers States of Nigeria. It was therefore concluded that social and cultural issues inhibit access to basic education of school-aged children. Recommendations are that school administrators should employ appropriate administrative strategies to mitigate the effects of the social and cultural variables to increase access to basic education of school aged children.