An assessment of the extent of teachers involvement in strategic plans’ formulation: a case of public secondary schools in Lari District, Kiambu county, Kenya

Abstract

The Ministry of Education requires that all public schools formulate strategic plans to ensure that curriculum implementation is done in an effective and efficient manner. The process of coming up with a meaningful strategic plan is supposed to be a concerted effort. All the stakeholders in a school ought to be involved in the strategic plan`s formulation. Teachers are among the stakeholders who should play very crucial role in the formulation of the document since they are directly involved in the curriculum implementation. If teachers are not fully involved in the formulation of their school`s strategic plan then this very important document becomes meaningless. The purpose of this study was to assess the extent of teachers’ involvement in strategic plans formulation in Lari District, Kiambu County. The study was guided by four specific objectives; to establish the forms of teachers’ involvement in strategic plans’ formulation process, to examine the level of teachers’ involvement in strategic plans’ formulation, to determine whether teachers` expertise on strategic plans` formulation process affected their involvement in strategic plans` formulation andto assess whether teachers’ attitude affectedtheir involvement in formulation of schools’ strategic plans. The research employed qualitative research method. Case study design was employed for the study. The target population for this study consisted of all the thirty nine (39) secondary school principals and four hundred and forty three (443) teachers in the thirty nine (39) public secondary schools in Lari District, Kiambu County. The study employed purposive sampling technique to determine the schools to be sampled. Fifteen (15) schools were picked to form the sample. Interview schedules were used to collect data from the sampled principals and teachers while documents analysis was employed to confirm some of the responses that were given by the respondents. To determine validity of the instruments used the instruments were given to two experts including my supervisor to evaluate the relevance of each item in the instruments to the stated objectives. Validity was determined using Content Validity Index (C.V.I).The researcher attained a validity coefficient of 0.70. In order to establish reliability of the instruments and to avoid tampering with the study area the instruments were taken for piloting on a population that was similar to the target population. Two schools in the adjacent Nyandarua District were used. The study established that teachers are not meaningfully involved in their schools` strategic plans` formulation process. The study is useful to the Ministry of Education since it established reasons behind teachers non-involvement in the strategic plan`s formulation process. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education and the school managers need to come up with measures that would ensure that teachers are sufficiently involved in schools` strategic plans` formulation process.