The research project report was prepared as a result of an empirical study carried out in Mutiti Division of Kitui District, Kenya in the year 2006. The Author of the report was a student from University of Nairobi doing Master of Education degree in curriculum studies. The author, who is from Mutiti Division where the study was carried out, had been influenced to carry out the study after realizing that the academic performance in the primary schools in the area was poor. Therefore she conducted the study to find out why the primary school pupils were performing poorly. The findings of the study were that the poor performance was a combination of several factors such as famine, early marriage, child labor,the ignorance of the parents,negative attitude towards education and schools being very far such that pupils found difficult to go to school because of the distance.