Thesis Title: Boards of Management Strategies and School Development in Public Secondary Schools in West Pokot County, Kenya.

Student Name: Kapchanga Martin

Name of supervisors

1. Prof. Julius Kiprop Maiyo

2. Dr. Simon Kipkenei

ABSTRACT

There seem to be variances in terms of school development of most public secondary schools in Kenya despite there being a policy establishing Boards of Management charged with the responsibilities such as setting vision, establishing goals, developing policies, allocating resources and ensuring accountability. Schools as learning institutions have set goals and performance standards which they aspire to achieve and therefore school management becomes the key aspect through which these goals can be achieved for enhanced development. The purpose of this study therefore was to establish the effective of Boards of Management strategy on school development in West Pokot County, Kenya. The study was guided by the following objectives: to evaluate the influence of Boards of Management instructional management strategy; resource management strategy, and Boards of Management relations strategy on school development in West Pokot County, Kenya. The study was based on Open Systems Theory in operationalizing the variables in the study. The target population was all the 120 principals of public secondary schools in the county, 1800 BoM members, 1 County Director of Education and 4 Sub-County Directors of Education Officers giving a total of 1925. The study applied mixed research approach with descriptive survey design. A suitable sample of 332 respondents was determined through the Yamane Formula. The study utilized simple random and purposive sampling techniques in identifying a study sample for data collection. The research instruments that were used in data collection were questionnaires for principals and BoM members and interview schedule for the education officers. Before data collection, the researcher conducted a pilot study to test the validity and reliability of research instruments. Instrument reliability was determined through a test-retest method and a Cronbach Alpha coefficient of at least 0.7 was computed, which was considered sufficient for use of the questionnaires in the actual study. The findings of the study were presented in tables and figures. The study established that guidance and counseling infrastructure management influenced students’ discipline and that the effect was moderate implying that a moderate number of students improved their discipline behaviour after acquiring guidance and counseling service. The study also established that guidance and counseling financial resource allocation management   influenced students’ discipline. Further, the study established that guidance and counseling time allocation management influenced students’ discipline. The study therefore concluded that, there is a significant positive association between guidance and counselling management and student discipline. The study recommends that the school boards of management should allocate infrastructure resources for guidance and counselling service as they contribute immensely to student discipline. The study further recommends that a policy should be created to create a deliberate financial vote head for guidance and counselling services in secondary school as the study has established a significant positive association between financial resources and student discipline.  The study recommends that policy should be developed to allocate guidance and counselling services time on the curriculum just like Games, sports and societies on the time table as the findings have shown that hardly to schools create quality time for counselling services whereas there is a significant association between guidance and counselling and student discipline.