Headteachers' attitudes towards decentralization of administrative structures of public secondary schools in Baringo and Koibatek districts

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.