Determining the optimal enrolment in public secondary schools of Marakwet district
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Date
2011-08-09
Authors
Kipkemoi, R. K.
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Abstract
The issue of school size has been a central issue in school administration. This has been so because of the fact that it has been a (dependent) variable in which other educational variables (especially cost and quality) depend upon. The challenge faced by stakeholders in the educational sector has been that of determining the school size that was considered optimal. This was the enrolment in which efficiency could be realized. The problem under investigation in this study was how to determine the optimal school size.
Some of the Research questions that guided the study included: what was the optimal size for secondary schools in the district, was there any relationship between school size and school expenditure, what was the recurrent per pupil expenditure and what was the perception of the school managers on the optimal school size.
The purpose of this study was to determine the optimal school size that enhances internal efficiency in the operation of secondary schools in Marakwet District. The study was also aimed at determining the minimum school enrolment point above which the unit cost of education increases and below which it is fiscally uneconomical to operate it.
The study was to provide important information to educational planners and policy makers to determine the optimal size of secondary schools. Both theoretical and conceptual framework was used in the study. A theoretical framework of a cost function in education was used. Regression equations were estimated in linear forms to determine the coefficients of the variables and their significances. A conceptual framework that showed how optimal school size was determined through appropriate combination of school inputs was used.
Literature related to the study was reviewed. It was studied under the following subheadings: school enrolment size, internal efficiency in schools, enrolment and summary.
A research design for this study was descriptive. Data for study was collected from a population of 26 secondary schools in the district. 12 schools were simpled out from the population for the study. A pre-testing of the research instrument used was done to attest its validity and reliability. The research instruments used was a questionnaire, which was completed by the principals of the 12 sampled schools.
The research found out that there was an inverse correlation coefficient between the per student recurrent expenditure and the school size. This implied that as the school size was increased, the cost there of decreased and vice versa.
The correlation coefficient of school size squared was positive. This meant that the long run cost curve was parabolic which depicted that school size could not be increased indefinitely. The optimal school size for the schools in the study was 320 students. The unit cost of education at the optimal school size as Kshs.17,503.30. Most of the sampled schools were not operating at the optimal size hence there existed internal inefficiencies in their operations.
The research recommended that school managers and stakeholders should be guided by such studies in their planning in order to avoid inefficiencies and diseconomies of scale. Schools that were under-enrolled should be matched while those that are overenrolled should create more streams so as to enjoy economies of scale
Description
Department of Educational Management Policy & Curriculum Studies, 56p.: ill The LC146 .K5 2009
Keywords
High schools enrollment--Kenya, Education, Secondary--Kenya