Boards of management resource management strategy and school development in west Pokot County

Abstract

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. To meet these goals, the education act established Boards of Management of schools to steer schools into achieving the goals, however, despite this, there are disparities in school developments in terms of physical, human and infrastructural development a gap that this study sought to fill. This study therefore sought to establish the effect of Boards of Management resource management practices on school development in West Pokot County. 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, 1800 BoM members, 1 County Director of Education and 4 Sub-County Directors of Education officers which totaled 1925. A suitable sample of 332 respondents was determined through the Yamane formula. The study applied mixed research approach with descriptive survey design. The study utilized simple random and purposive sampling techniques in identifying a suitable study sample of 332 respondents for data collection. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. Reliability of the instruments 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 descriptive analysis observed a below average function of resource management in the county with all means from each sub construct of this variable being below average. Despite this, the ANOVA statistic found a positive association between resource management practices and school development with the probability value <0.05. The inferential statics revealed significant positive effect on school development 0.05 (r=.394, p=0.001) with R2 =.394 being 39.4% changes in school development explained by the resource management practices while 60.6% is captured in by the error term. The study concludes that there is a significant positive relationship between the Board of Management resource management and school development in West Pokot County. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education should develop a policy framework that would guide BoM members to undergo mandatory and comprehensive training on financial accounting, human resource and physical resource management.