Adequacy of Instructional Resources Provided by Principals and Students’ Academic Performance in Machakos County, Kenya

Abstract

Globally, regionally and nationally, studies keepdocumenting insufficient provision of instructional resources by principals’ to teaching and learning process. Despite the continued efforts by the Kenyan government to institute policies to mitigate this problem, students’ performance in Machakos remain low over the last five years. The purpose of this study was therefore to investigate the relationship between adequacy of instructional resources and students’ performance in public secondary schools in Machakos County. Descriptive survey design was adopted, simple random sampling and stratified sampling were used to select target population of 8 sub county QASOs, 47 principals and 395 teachers of public secondary schools within Machakos County, Kenya. Both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent t-test) wasused in the analysis of quantitative data. Qualitative data was analysed thematically. Questionnaires and interview guides were employed in data collection process. The study established that, principals did not provide sufficient instructional resources to teaching and learning. Further, there was limited improvisation and innovation of the available teaching materials to compliment the few provided by the principals.Eventually the paper concluded that, provision and improvisation of instructional resourcesinfluences learners’ performance. The study recommends that the government should put more resources in schools and capacity built principals on improvisation and use of the locally available teaching and learning resources to make them sufficient for teaching and learning process.