Strategic Planning and Performance of Public Secondary Schools in Kakamega South Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Argument on whether strategic planning improves organizational performance is ongoing. Many theorists and practitioners in management possess different views with regards to whether or not strategic planning positively correlates with performance. Some scholars assert that although strategic planning is not the only contributor to high organization performance, organizations with excellently executed strategic plans perform better than those without such plans. The ever increasing performance demands from stakeholders amid the high turbulent and non-linear dynamism in both external and internal organizational environment make strategic planning indispensable. This has obligated the Government, through the MoE to require every public secondary school in Kenya to undertake strategic planning to enhance quality education. It is upon this argument that this study was conceived, with the objectives to determine the strategic planning practices by public secondary schools in Kakamega south sub-county, and to determine the influence of strategic planning on performance. The research used cross-sectional descriptive census survey targeting all the 31 public secondary schools registered by the MoE by 2019. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire. Through the questionnaires, data was obtained from 28 out of the 31 targeted public secondary schools in the sub-county. Secondary data was collected by obtaining KCSE performance of the schools for the past five years from Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) website while sports results were sought from the Kakamega South Secondary Schools Sport Association (KSSSSA) files at the sub-County Education offices. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the data analysis. The results showed that 89.3%, 96.4% and 71.4% of the schools have mission, vision and core values respectively. Further, 68% of the schools have a documented strategic plan, although there is least involvement of strategic planning experts in strategy formulation. The study also revealed that strategic planning was positively compares to performance. The study recommended that: (i) All public secondary schools in Kenya to embrace and engage in strategic planning practices. (ii) the education officers including the sub-county QUASOs both from the Ministry and from TSC should use the findings to identify the strategic planning practices that greatly impact performance of the schools and therefore recommend and emphasize them in their school inspection reports, preparation of heads manuals and schools’ Quality policy statements, identification of training needs assessment for schools’ administrators and Senior Management Teams (SMTs) on emerging strategic managerial and administrative issues and on policy guidelines. (iii) School managers and administrators should ensure adequate environmental analysis and elaborate extensive stakeholder involvement in the entire strategic planning practices. The main limitation of the study was that it confined itself to a school set-up and so restricted itself to organizational performance measures in terms of academic progression, performance in other co-curricular activities and stakeholder satisfaction, ignoring the Balanced Scorecard spectrum of organizational performance measurement. Finally, future research should involve similar studies in different contexts using the same or different methodology to establish consensus on the relationship between the variables.