Role of headteachers' organizational culture in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education performance:A case study of Nyandarua South District, Kenya.

Abstract

Organizational Culture can be defined as a collection of values and norms shared by people or group in an organization Hill and Jones, (2004:417). This study sought to investigate the role of head teacher’s Organizational Culture (OC) in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) performance: A case of Nyandarua South District. The study was guided by the following objectives; To determine the role of head teachers’ Organizational Culture (OC) on KCPE performance of public primary schools in Nyandarua South District. To identify the teachers’ perception of their Organizational Culture (OC) and how it affects the KCPE performance. To establish the role of OC on KCPE performance in Nyandarua South District and to determine how pupils’ perception of their school organizational culture affects the KCPE performance in Nyandarua South District. The study was guided by Schein’s Organizational Culture (OC) theory model (1988) which has elements of culture. Literature has been reviewed on the role of head teachers’ Organizational Culture (OC), teachers and pupils perception of their school Organizational Culture (OC). The researcher used descriptive survey design. Target population was 40 public primary schools in Nyandarua South district. The researcher used 2 schools for piloting which did not participate in the actual study and 8 schools for the research study. A total of 8 headteachers, 24 teachers and 80 pupils were randomly and purposively sampled for the study. The researcher used questionnaires, interview schedule and observation schedule for data collection. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and thematically for qualitative data all based on research questions. The findings were presented in tables of frequency distributions percentages, bar graphs and pie charts. The study concluded that poor performance in public primary schools in Nyandarua South District was high owning to minimal time allocated to academic matters as reflected by the time spent on private studies, supervised studies and remedial teaching where only1-5 hours was spent per week. Most significant aspects of headteachers’ Organizational Culture in influencing academic performance were that there seems to be a friendly atmosphere among the people headteachers supervise. The teaching load for the teachers was enormous as majority of the teachers had above 32 lessons per week. There was clear information on roles and responsibilities of teachers, the school was great to work in, teaching was a great profession, the headteacher listens and values the teachers’ ideas and that other teachers take teachers opinion seriously respectively. The study recommended that the ministry of education should offer continuous capacity building to the head teachers on management of the schools to enhance their organizational culture to enhance performance. The study also recommended that the government and other stakeholders should implement strictly their guiding policies on headteachers’ Organizational Culture to ensure the mismanagement in schools was minimized. The study also recommends that the headteachers should review the school management strategies to address the bottleneck issues that exist in the management of his Organizational Culture.