Collective Bargaining Agreements Implementation Approaches and Equity in Grade Promotion of Post-Primary Teachers in Kakamega County, Kenya

Abstract

The use of two different implementation approaches for the 2017-2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement of teachers casted doubts on equity in promotion because each union had its own approach. Given that there were two unions at post-primary level, the purpose of this study was to compare equity accruable between them in Kakamega County. The objective was to determine the difference in equity in grade promotion of post-primary teachers between the use of scheme of service and the career progression guideline approaches based on Teacher Performance and Appraisal Development tool between 2017-2021. It was guided by a socialist economics of education theory. A comparative research design with a sample of 1,569 respondents from 5,923 was used. Systematic random sampling was used to select teachers in each union, purposive sampling for principals and saturated sampling for sub-county directors of education and union secretaries. Through piloting, content validity was enhanced with internal consistency reliability of 0.877. In data analysis, pairwise correlation established plausible interactions of variables at α = 0.05 with membership in Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers being statistically insignificant to promotion (p˃.05) through logistic regression analysis. A Gini coefficient 0.0001 found a statistically significant difference (p≤.05) between the two unions with an extra score in 2017, and teaching in extra-county and national schools reducing the odds of promotion to the next grade. It was concluded that promotion was marginally equitable in Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers than in Kenya National Union of Teachers with gini coefficients 0.0567 and 0.0698 respectively.