Conflict and Trade-offs Between Efficiency and Access: A Case of Day and Boarding Secondary Schools in Kenya

While education is considered to be a human right and need, the delivery of secondary education in Kenya has been slow due to a number of bottlenecks that includes:- one, differential trends in access and participation in secondary school education with low participation of the poor and two, low efficiency and quality of education as indicated in the poor performance.The purpose of this study was to find ways of making secondary school education more accessible and efficient given that day schools are considered to be more accessible but inefficient while boarding schools are less accessible but efficientPurposive sampling was used to select 12 day and 14 boarding schools whose head teachers and 296 Form Four students in Uasin-Gishu district responded to questionnaires related to academic performance availability of learning facilities, supervisory support of learners, time available for learners private studies and effects of distance walked to school on performance.The findings of the study showed that students in boarding schools generally have better study facilities, receive professional and more supervisory support, that long distance walked to school had negative impact on student performance and lastly students in boarding schools had more time available for their studies. The study recommends that efforts be made to build more day schools and equip them with proper learning facilities for better access and efficiency respectively.