The effect of project management processes on performance of secondary schools in Kenya (a case of Nyeri County)
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Date
2013-01-24
Authors
Maina, Peter Kibocha
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Abstract
The Kenyan Ministry of Education (MOE) has identified "management" as a major challenge
to the achievement of national educational goals in secondary schools. Its management has
been on the basis of education as a basic social service and in ignorance of an alternative
view of education as a production function. The effective and efficient achievement of
production functions has historically been through Project management which has continued
to evolve creating the image of a universal solution to organisational problems; on the
platform of specific techniques for initiating, planning, execution, control and closure
processes. This study sought to explore the evolution of project management processes in the
current secondary schools administrative practices and how this relates to the Kenya
Certificate of Secondary Examination (KCSE) performance. To meet this general objective
an experiential survey was carried out in 49 secondary schools of Nyeri County stratified on
the basis of gender and financial ability. Data collected was cleaned, coded and analysed by
SPSS version IO.The results identified application Initiating, planning, execution, control and
closure group processes consistent with those generally accepted by the body of knowledge
in project management. This was taken as an indication of the evolution of project
management in the education area of application driven by the pressures of efficiency and
effectiveness. An analysis of secondary school performance in their KCSE examinations was
provided by the provincial educations office. Correlational analysis between the level of
application and performance in KCSE showed a movement in the same direction suggesting
that an increase in the application of project management processes would result in improved
KCSE performance. It was therefore recommended that the secondary schools students
programme be managed as a project thereby deliberately applying all the PM processes
designed \0 achieve the educational objectives and not merely to prepare for the Ministry of
Educations (MOE) audit exercises. To effectively and efficiently apply these processes, there
is need for all teachers to be exposed to the knowledge, skills and techniques of project
management and for the design of flexible templates in this application area. Finally, since
correlation in this exploratory study is not evidence of causality, it is recommended that a
further causal study be undertaken to test the hypothesis that education would be best
managed through the application of initiating, planning, execution, control and closure
project management processes.
Description
Department of Business Administration, 78p. The LB 2970 .K4M3 2012
Keywords
School management and organization --Kenya --Nyeri county, Project management, Education, Secondary --kenya --Nyeri county, Performance