An assesment of the effectiveness of decebtralized teacher recruitment system in enhancing teacher management in public secondary schools in Kandara sub-county, Murang'a county, Kenya.

Abstract

The government of Kenya introduced the school based teacher recruitment policy in public secondary schools in 2001.This school based policy was intended to enhance teacher retention, equity in teacher distribution and more importantly to improve efficiency in teacher recruitment practices in public secondary schools in the country. The government draws out policy guidelines and disseminated them to the relevant bodies to help guide when the exercise of teacher recruitment is to be undertaken. However the laid guidelines are sometimes not adhered to causing malpractice of the implementation process. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of decentralized teacher recruitment system in enhancing teacher management in public secondary schools in Kandara sub-County, Murang’a County. The study was guided by the theoretical model of decentralization of education developed by Gaynor (1998). The study adopted purposive sampling which utilized the school principals as respondents. This was motivated by the sense that they sit and facilitate on the panel implementing the recruitment policy. Kandara Sub-county has 50 public secondary schools and therefore simple random sampling was used to sample 30 out of the 50 principals for the purpose of this study. The study applied mixed method approach. Data was collected using questionnaire. The study used the concurrent triangulation design. Before conducting the actual data collection procedure, piloting of research instruments was conducted in two schools which was not included in the main study. Face validity was tested from the pilot study whereas content validity of the instruments was established and improved through expert judgment. From the results of the pilot the study, reliability coefficient was determined using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Method. Split-half technique of reliability was used and then subjected to reliability testing using Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient and gave a reliability coefficient of 0.81 - was used to collect data. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics like frequencies and percentages and presented in tables using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS). Data was both qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative data collected was coded and entered into an SPSS programme for analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the quantitative data obtained. The statistics used include frequencies, means, and percentages, and results presented in figures, tables, graphs and pie-charts. Qualitative data was edited, grouped into related themes and categories, and presented in discussion form. The information derived from this study was of importance to key education stakeholders such as Kenya Education Staff Institute (KESI), TSC in identifying training needs of BOM members, among others; identifying the constraints on the ground affecting teacher recruitment process. The study established that the selection panel exercises high degree of transparency and accountability in the recruitment exercise. The study established that denomination, gender, university /college one graduated from, ethnicity and marital status are factors in determining the deserving candidate. From the findings obtained, it was concluded that the distribution of teachers across subjects in their schools was excellent. The study concludes that the decentralized teacher recruitment system has improved teacher retention in schools. Therefore, this study recommends that an oversight committee be instituted to always ensure that the level of transparency and accountability is maintained.