Impact of the Kenya education staff institute's in service programmes on secondary school Headteachers in Machakos District in Kenya.

Abstract

Kenya Education Staff Institute (KESI) was established in 1981 with the aim of training educational personnel in management to address the problems of mismanagement facing secondary schools. Despite KESI Inservice training, secondary schools still experience a number of problems. The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of the KESI Inservice training in relation to the headteachers administrative tasks performance in public secondary schools in Machakos District of Eastern Province in Kenya. The study was guided by research questions and data collected using three types of questionnaires. To determine the reliability, questionnaires were given to three headteachers in a pilot study. The target population was thirty-six (36) secondary school headteachers who had undergone KESI in-service programme, seven (7) KESI trainers and three (3) Inspectors of schools who were purposively sampled. The data was quantified using descriptive statistics like frequencies and percentages. The findings were presented in tables. The major findings of the study were that majority 34 (97%) of the headteachers found the KESI in-service courses relevant and quite influential to their administrative task performance. It also emerged that the headteachers experience a number of problems while implementing management skills learnt. The major recommendations therefore were; that KESI should get in touch with school administrators after training by making follow-up and evaluation of the courses offered. Ministry of Education should also ensure that all teacher managers are trained in the application of management skills and review pre-service and in-service programmes regularly to make them relevant.