| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of secondary school principals‟ instructional supervision practices on students Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination performance in Matuga district. The objectives of the study were to determine the extent do principals target setting influence students‟ Kenya Certificate Secondary Education (KCSE) performance, establishing the effects of principals‟ checking of professional record on students‟ KCSE performance, establish the effects of organization of parents student academic clinics by the principals on students‟ KCSE performance and to determine the extent to which principals‟ classroom observation influence student Kenya certificate of secondary examination performance in Matuga district. The study used descriptive survey design in which the target population was 7,567 students, 30 headteachers and 325 teachers from 30 public secondary schools. The study sampled 20 principals, 100 teachers and 240 students using stratified random sampling and purposive sampling methods. Of the sampled respondents, 240 students, 100 teachers and 18 principals responded by either completing the questionnaire and returning or participating in an interview. The data was collected by use of questionnaires and interview schedule. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentages and content analysis. The study established that according to majority of the teachers (69%) the principals‟ target setting influenced the students‟ performance in KCSE. The study further established that 71 percents of the teachers indicated that the principals checking of the professional reports enhanced the students, performance in KCSE. The study also established that most of the teachers (65%) indicated that the academic clinics enhanced the teachers‟ instructional skills thereby enhancing the performance of students in KCSE. It was also revealed that according to 94 percent of the teachers, the classroom observation by the principal enhanced the students‟ performance in KCSE. The regression analysis on the relationship between the dependent and the independent variable demonstrated that all the independent variables had a positive relationship with the students KCSE performance. Based on the findings of the study as was demonstrated by the regression results, the study concluded that target setting, checking of professional records, academic clinics and classroom observations influenced the performance of the students in KCSE. The study recommended that the principals should emphasis the importance of target setting with the aim of raising the academic performance of the school, the principals should include other reports which were not inspected as was the lesson plans and schemes of work, the government should make it a policy requirement that all the reports are inspected regularly by the principal, the principal should intensify the academic clinics so as the enhance the teachers instructional skills the thereby improve the academic performance of the students and that the principal should intensify classroom observations with the aim of ensuring efficiency as the teachers are able to provide the students with the necessary knowledge and no time is lost or wasted. | en_US |
