| dc.description.abstract | Educators and the general public have expressed concern over factors that influence student
performance in examinations. The most outstanding factor has to do with the school management.
Performances in national examinations in majority of the schools in Isiolo County have been posting poor results. The county secondary schools have had considerable provision of inputs by both government and Non-Governmental Organizations alike: The purpose of this study was to investigate the • impact of secondary school management on Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) performance in Isiolo County. The research employed descriptive survey design. the independent variables namely; Competent management, teacher qualification, teacher turnover d input by school board of governor and PT A while, dependent variable was students' performance in KCSE examination. The study targeted 6 secondary schools of Isiolo County that have been presenting candidates for KCSE for the last five years from 2005 to 2009. Six head teachers, 118 teachers, 425 form three and form four students and 78 members of Board of Governors and 3 District Education Officers to form a target population of 630.6 head teachers were purposively selected while 20 students were randomly selected from every school. The same procedure was applied to select the five teachers and five BoGs members in every institution to have a sample size of 189 respondents. The data was collected by use of questionnaires and interview schedules. The data was assembled and grouped as per the specific objectives of this research and analysis was done using Statistical package for social scientist version 17.0. Fifteen of the teachers rated school BoGs members as incompetent, 10 teachers rated BoGs members as competent, 5 of the teachers rated them as fairly competent. Twenty five of the BoGs members agreed to have been involved. in the Maintenances of discipline in the school. Twenty eight of the members of BoGs in the schools sampled have never rewarded any teacher for exemplary good performance. This can lead to low staff morale and in tum poor KCSE students performance. On the issue of principal advising and keeping board informed on matters of management in the school, 12 responded that they were rarely informed, 9 were regular informed while, 9 were not at all informed. Sixteen teachers. blamed inadequate staffing for poor performance in Isiolo County, 6 blamed inadequate facilities while, 4 stated that low staff morale plays a critical role. Four teachers pointed out low staff morale and only, 3 and 1 blamed frequent teacher transfer and intake of poorly qualified students in form one respectively. The reasons for BoG members replacement were rated and 15 of the teachers would replace the members because of incompetence, 5 because of illiteracy, 4 because of ignorance, 3 because of combination of the earlier listed factors and 2 because of irresponsibility. This study noted that the student-teacher ratio in Public secondary schools in Isiolo County has been on an upward trend since 2005 in all the sampled schools. The student-teacher ratio is within the acceptable level of one teacher to 40 students, the issue of concern is the teachers' transfer rate which result in lack of content continuity in learning. The study showed that most head teachers had not attended any in-service course or induction on management. An attempt to be made to replicate more findings on the impact of school management on student academic performance in Isiolo County as their performance has not been impressive for the last ten years. | en_US |
