An assessment of the influence of stakeholders in implementation of strategic plans in public secondary schools in Machakos sub county

Abstract

The study focused on assessment of the influence of school stakeholders in implementation of public schools strategic plans’ i n Machakos Sub County as the main objective and parent influence, government influenc e, board of management influence and teachers influence as the Independent variables . The Descriptive design was used in the research design. The target population of the s tudy consisted of was all 62 public secondary schools registered in Machakos Sub County by 2014. Simple stratified sampling technique was used. The sample comprised o f 19 schools which were stratified according to categories of national, Extra County, county and sub county schools. The main research instrument used in the study was ques tionnaires comprising of structured questions to collect qualitative and quantitative p rimary data developed in accordance with the research objectives and questions. Data ca pturing was done using SPSS software. Descriptive statistics were computed for presenting the data. The inferential statistics was used to come up with the forecasting models and validation of the same models. The study found out that through parents in fluence; School fees defaulter’s affects implementation of the school strategic plan and Parents level of education influences implementation of the strategic plan. Th e study revealed that through government influence; government policies have posi tively influenced implementation of the school strategic plan and to a moderate extent; the Government trains principals on strategic plan formulation. Respondents further ind icated that in Board of management influence; Board of management is actively involved in planning the school strategic plan, there is adequate gender representation among the Board members and the age of the Board of management members influences the impl ementation of the school strategic plan. Teacher influence indicated that teachers inf luence the implementation of the school strategic plan through active involvement in extra curricula activities of the school, the parents are provided with a forum for educational d iscussions with teachers, creation of an active guidance and counseling department, invol vement in the discipline of the students, giving Teachers opportunities to develop in their career and frequent discussion of discipline of the students with parents and fina lly in terms of moderating effect of resources on the relationship; the respondents were of the view that resources actually moderates the relationship between school stakehold ers and implementation of public schools strategic plans’ in Machakos Sub County. M ore specific; Availability of School finances have influenced the implementation of stra tegic plan, Enrolment trends in the school have forced schools to change the school bud get thus affecting implementation of the strategic plan and some projected sources of fu nds have influenced changes in the strategic plan. The study also found out that indep endent variables significantly influences dependent variable (r 2 = 0.722). At the same time by introducing the moderating variable the explanatory power improved significantly.