Abstract
Kenyan public secondary schools are intended to run at a cost that is both cheap and sustainable. Despite this, the cost of education in most public secondary schools in Bomet County is still high in relative terms. This could indicate that public schools are operating inefficiently in terms of costs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of school location on cost efficiency in public secondary schools in Bomet County, Kenya. The target population of the study was two hundred and seventy principals of public secondary schools and all the five Sub-County Directors of Education in Bomet County. Using stratified and simple random sampling approaches, a sample of 175 principals was chosen. The data was collected from the principals using a semi-structured questionnaire, and the data from the Sub-county Directors of Education was collected using an interview schedule. The data was collected from the principals using a semi-structured questionnaire, and the data from the Sub-county Directors of Education was collected using an interview schedule. The Content Validity Index was used to check for validity, and it found that all variables had an S-CVI of greater than 0.9, indicating that they were all valid and could be used in the study. All variables had Cronbach alpha coefficients of greater than 0.7, indicating that the variables were internally reliable enough to be used in the study. The data was analyzed and summarized using descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, means, and standard deviations. To test the hypotheses, the researchers employed simple linear regression analysis in inferential statistics to see how well school location could predict cost efficiency. Statistical operations on data analysis were performed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) statistics software. The influence of the school location on the cost efficiency in public secondary schools was examined using nine indicators. These indicators included the effects of school location on diverse expenses such as water services provision, electricity services provision, food supplies, administration cost, extracurricular activities, access to workshops and seminars, external support services, transportation costs, and missing on the cost-saving opportunities. The study results indicated that the respondents indicated that the school incurred huge expenses on water bills, and food supplies to a very small extent. The study also concluded on the presence of a statistically significant influence of school location on the cost efficiency of public secondary schools in Bomet County. These results were attributed to higher operational costs associated with their geographical remoteness and sparsely populated schools, which were then not able to benefit from economies of scale in their operations.
Highlights
Diverse studies on school location have noted variations in the cost efficiency of schools located in rural and urban schools as a consequence of input and output variables in secondary school education
The study results indicated that the respondents indicated that the school incurred huge expenses on water bills, and food supplies to a very small extent
The results show that high school exam scores are apparently unaffected by the cash transfer programme and effects on high school choices by eligible students are minimal
Summary
Diverse studies on school location have noted variations in the cost efficiency of schools located in rural and urban schools as a consequence of input and output variables in secondary school education. Records held by the county education office in Bomet indicate that there is cost inefficiency in the utilization of educational resources in public secondary schools (Ministry of Education, 2018). The average unit cost variance as indicated in table is 2.4% and 3.4% for rural and urban schools respectively. It is expected that public secondary schools optimally allocate resources within the school setting, use the lowest unit cost and amount of resources possible to obtain the desired output. Records held in Bomet county education office show that most public secondary schools are cost inefficient in the way they operate (Bomet County Government., 2019) This is evidenced in the wide variation of the actual amount spent on educational items from the amount indicated in the budget. The undesirable cost inefficiency levels in public secondary schools in Bomet County may perhaps be due to school characteristics such as school location
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