| dc.description.abstract | In 1998, the Government of Kenya released the Master Plan on
Education and Training (MPET), which entailed increasing efficiency and
effectiveness through decentralization and devolution of power and authority,
by applying professional management in the education sector. One of the
factors, which would be deemed critical to the restructuring of the education
system in Kenya, is the headteachers' attitude, because headteachers play a
crucial role as agents of change.
The objectives of the research were: To establish headteachers'
attitudes towards decentralization of administrative structures of public
secondary schools; to determine whether gender, age, school size and levels of
academic and professional qualifications had any effect on the headteachers'
altitudes towards decentralization of administrative structures of public
secondary schools; to explore the management difficulties head teachers face
while discharging their administrative roles in a scenario where Education
Officers have a close control in the management of schools; to elicit
head teachers' responses on whether BOGs were effective in the management
of schools; and to establish headteachers' responses on whether their positions
would be threatened when the PTA would elect more BOG members.
The study design adopted was 'ex post facto' and the target population
consisted of all the tilly-one head teachers of public secondary schools in
Baringo and Koibatek districts. In this study a questionnaire was the sole
instrument, arlSL..80per cent of the sampled head teachers returned filled out
questionnaires. The instrument reliability was found to be 0.88. The two-tailed
t-test and the One-way ANaYA were used to test the hypotheses at the p<O.05
level of significance.
The study found out that headteachers of the studied public secondary
schools generally had high mean attitudes towards the decentralization of
administrative structures of public secondary schools. The study also found
out that while there was no significant difference between headteachers of
different gender, ages and school sizes, there was a significant difference
between headteachers of different levels of academic and professional
qualifications in their attitudes towards decentralization of administrative
structures of public secondary schools.
In view of the study findings, it was recommended that headteachers
should be in-serviced on administrative decentralization before the
programmes are finally implemented at the secondary school level. It was
further recommended that before the MPET recommendation on the election
of BOG members is implemented, head teachers' and PTA members' roles
should be legally defined to allow for a smooth transition to decentralization in
the management of public secondary schools. From the study it was suggested
that there was need for a replication of this study using a larger sample of
headteachers of public secondary schools to elicit a national perspective of the
headteachers' attitudes towards decentralization of administrative structures of
public secondary schools. It was further suggested that when the MPET
decentralization programmes will have been implemented, there would be
need for a study to determine the headteachers' attitudes towards decentralized
administrative structures of public secondary schools. | en |
