| dc.description.abstract | Parental participation is a key ingredient for education intervention and socio-economic development. Education access, retention and participation are achieved through emphasis on inclusive education in regular schools for learners with special needs and disabilities, and parental participation through financing. In Kenya the financing of SNE is the constitutional obligation of both the government and the parents. The occurrence of low accessibility to SNE in spite of increased government financing to the programmes has been linked to various factors. The purpose of the study was to determine the selected factors influencing parental participation in financing SNE programmes in public primary schools in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives: To determine parental participation on access to SNE programmes in public primary schools in Mombasa County; to establish parental participation in decision making in financing SNE programmes in public primary schools in Mombasa County, and to determine the parents' ability to finance SNE programmes in public primary schools in Mombasa County. The study adopted descriptive survey design and was informed by Social Capital Theory advanced by James Coleman in 1988. The study target population was 32 head teachers, 1521 parents, and 12 education officers. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used in selecting the study sample. The study sample comprised of 11 head teachers, 153 parents of pupils with special education needs and 4 Education Officers, yielding a total of 168 respondents. The main research instruments used were questionnaires for parents, interview guides for head teachers and Education Officers and document analysis. Validity and reliability were ensured through face validity and application of split- half during piloting respectively. Data was analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. In quantitative data analysis, statistical package for social sciences (SPSS ver.22) was applied to generate descriptive statistics then presented using percentages and frequency distribution tables while qualitative data analysis used thematic approach. The major findings were that, the parental participation to enable their children access SNE programmes was on decline in Mombasa County over the last 4 years. Secondly, parental participation in decision making in financing SNE programmes was less effective and thirdly, parental ability to finance SNE programmes was low. And finally the results based on research findings led to the conclusion that there was less effective parental participation in financing SNE in programmes in public primary schools in Mombasa County, The study recommended that schools administrators should encourage use of forum to discuss and come up with solutions on various challenges faced by the parents in financing SNE programmes not only in the in the study locale but in all other areas of SNE programmes experiencing similar constraints. | en_US |