Financing of Public Day Secondary Schools and Its Implications on the Quality of Learning in Kisii District, Kisii County, Kenya

Abstract

Despite the fact that the policy shift in secondary education in Kenya to promoting day secondary schooling in response to the exponential growth in secondary school enrollment as a viable alternative to limited opportunities occasioned by the high cost of education, the attainment of the envisaged objective of quality, equity and relevance of the public day secondary schools (PDSS) has been a question in various political and academic fora. The purpose of this study was to assess the financing of day secondary school education and its implications on the quality of learning in Kisii District, Kisii County, Kenya. The study had four objectives, namely; to examine the adequacy, reliability and trends of income sources in financing day secondary schools; to analyze the utilization of existing income sources in the teaching and learning process; find out the implications of financing PDSS on quality of learning, and finally device strategies of enhancing the quality of learning in day secondary schools in the study locale of Kisii county. A descriptive survey design was used in this study. The target population was all the 102 public day secondary schools in the district. The sample of the study comprised of 36 day secondary schools chosen through stratified random sampling. Purposive sampling was used to select 36 principals, 36 Bursars, 36 Board of Governors(BOG), 36 Parents Teachers Association (PTA) chair persons and 4 district quality assurance officers (DQAS) yielding a total of 148 respondents. Data was collected through questionnaires for principals and bursars and interview schedule for PTA, BOG chairpersons and DQASOs. The validity of the instruments was established through scrutiny by experts who were thesis supervisors. Test-retest method was used to establish reliability of the instruments. A correlation coefficient of 0.86 and 0.87 for Principals‟ questionnaires and Bursars‟ questionnaire was established respectively. The qualitative data from interview schedule was analyzed thematically and reported in narrative and direct quotes. The data from questionnaires was analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) computer programme version 20.0 and descriptive and inferential statistics generated. Specifically, percentages, means, standard deviation and t-test were used. The level of testing the hypotheses was set at .05 level of statistical significance confidence level. The major findings of the study indicated that the income sources in public day secondary schools (PDSS) were not only inadequate in providing learning resources to enhance quality of education, but also unreliable in providing resources to PDSS. The implications of these findings were that, the financial allocations were not enough to meet the quality of learning. This is in view of the fact that school enrolment had risen sharply and the available resources were overstretched. The overall conclusion emanating from these findings is that the sources of financing day secondary education were inadequate to meet the financial demands of learning to enhance quality. It is therefore recommended that; to enhance quality in day secondary schools, several sources be harnessed and the existing ones to be strengthened; it was necessary for schools to venture into enterprises which can generate more income like rental houses, crop and animal production, intensive gardening and hiring of school facilities; minimal cost sharing to continue being adopted in financing education. Finally further research to be carried out in more counties with varying socio-economic status to determine the strategy of boosting the income sources in order to enhance quality.