Communication barriers that affect the smooth management of public secondary schools in Starehe Division, Nairobi

Abstract

It is widely recognized that communication is an essential part of management. The school is a communicating organism whose success is achieved and judged by its communication system. This then makes communication barriers that affect the smooth management of secondary schools a center of interest in research. The purpose of this study was two-fold; to investigate the prevalent communication channels in secondary schools and to investigate the communication barriers that affect the smooth management ofsecondaryschoo~. The population considered was composed of four headteachers of four public secondary schools in Starehe Division, Nairobi. Teachers and students were also used. They were selected using simple random sampling. The students were samples from the Forms Two, Three and Four classes as the Form Ones were still too new to have grasped the nature of the problems. Data was collected using questionnaires for the head teacher, teachers and students. Since communication is a continuous process, the researcher used observation forms to record aspects of communication that occurred during the visits to the schools. A combination of these categories of items helped to gather high quality data from the respondents, which were easier to analyze. The data was analyzed using frequency tables and percentages. The findings were used to generate conclusions and recommendations. The study revealed communication barriers that exist in secondary schools. These are; use of one way communication, infrequent staff meetings, lack of cohesion among teachers, misinterpretation of information received and use of intimidating language and tone by the head teacher.