| dc.description.abstract | The Ministry of Education is perpetually interested in good performance of schools in the
national examinations. This is not always achieved in the many public secondary schools
in the country. This performance in national examinations is realized as a result of a
number of factors within the school set up that add up to the quality of the school system.
Quality in all the facets of the school is what constitutes Total Quality Management,
hence excellent performance in the national examinations. Empirical studies done, have
not adequately addressed the direct link between TQM and school performance. The
purpose of this study therefore, was to establish the influence of TQM principles on
performance of public secondary schools in Kajiado North Sub County. Specific
objectives of the study include: to establish the influence of Leadership commitment,
employee involvement, continuous improvement and customer focus on performance of
public secondary schools in Kajiado North Sub County. A review of related literature was
carried out and a conceptual framework drawn to express the research premise. A
purposeful sampling technique was applied to identify 4 schools out of the 6 public
secondary schools in Kajiado North Sub County. To achieve these objectives, data was
collected from 4 Principals/ deputy principals, 12 HoD’s, 25 Teachers, and 87 Students.
This gave a response rate of 69.72% out of target of 185. Data collection was done
through questionnaires for students, teachers and HoDs and an interview guide for
principals/deputy principals. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics
and presented using frequency tables, percentages and means. It was established that
Employee involvement had the strongest correlation to academic performance at a
correlation coefficient (r= .611). It was followed by Continuous improvement (r = .561),
Leadership commitment (r= .557) and the least was customer focus (r= .323).The study
therefore made the following recommendations: i) Principals to be more pro-active in
checking students’ progress, ii) Principals to require accountability from teachers
whenever they have been assigned duties, iii) Principals and Heads of Departments to
hold more frequent staff meeting/ departmental meetings in order to bring everyone up to
speed, iv) Teachers should learn to share best practices with others after training and the
same to be documented for the purpose of knowledge institutionalization and v) Schools
are encouraged to have more academic days and prize giving days in order to track
performance. The Ministry of Education should make follow up on recommendations
made by Quality Assurance Officers for implementation, improve on Teacher- student
ratio among other necessary resources. | en_US |
