RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRINCIPALS’ STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AT KENYA CERTIFICATE OF SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINATION IN MURANG’A COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

The education sector is paramount in the development of economy in all parts of the world, Kenya included. This justifies the general global concern for students’ academic performance from which the outputs are utilized towards economic growth. Related to this is that there has been introduction of various education reforms geared towards improvement of students' academic performance across the world. However, students' academic performance remains an issue of concern in many regions, including Kenya, where through the Ministry of Education; the government of has had the implementation of various educational policy interventions, including having a requirement that all secondary schools’ principals adopt strategic management plans. This was a drive to emphasis the need for strategic management of schools as an avenue for improvement of students’ learning outcomes. In this regard, different organizations, like Kenya Education Management Institute, have trained majority of secondary schools’ principals through the MOE. Despite all these efforts, academic performance of students in most parts of the republic, particularly in the county of Murang’a, remains low. In relation to this, the main objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between Principal’s Strategic Management Practices and students’ academic performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination in Murang’a County, Kenya. The study was guided by strategic management model by Garber (2006) theory. The study used correlational research design, The target population was 1000 and comprised of 250 secondary schools 'principals and 750 Heads of Departments from 250 public secondary schools in Murang’a County A sample of 50 principals and 150 Heads of Departments was obtained through stratified proportionate sampling. Research instruments included principals’ and HODs’ questionnaires and the researcher observation schedule. On reliability testing split-half technique was applied during which instruments pre-testing and a correlation coefficient of 0.7 and above between the two halves of the instruments made them deemed reliable. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data that made up of means, percentages, pie chart and standard deviations, Additionally, inferential statistics was incorporated by using Pearson correlation coefficient statistics to analysis data with a focus to establish the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The study established that principals’ use of strategic plans, stakeholders’ involvement in management practices, provision and maintenance of schools’ facilities had a statistically significant relationship with students’ academic performance at KCSE examination with Pearson correlation ranging between 0.523 to 0.84 and significance levels at p< 0.001 across the variables between which a statistically significant relationship was found. Conclusively, the more the schools’ principals highly put SMP in place, the more the schools will post higher academic results. Organizations like MOE, TSC and KEMI may use these findings to improve management of schools for improvement of student’ performance. This is related to recommendation that the MOE can regularly analyze schools’ strategic plans and make training on SMP mandatory for anyone aspiring to become a school principal. Based on the findings and conclusions, the study gave suggestions for further studies on; Relationship between other SMP used by other education key players and students’ academic performance, Relationship between SMP in other levels of education for instance, primary schools, and learners’ academic performance and a study on SMP in other stages of strategic management, for example evaluation stage