Influence of Principals’ Financing Initiatives on Learners’ Participation Rates in Technical, Vocational Education, and Training Institutions in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Financing higher education is a challenge that governments all over the world have struggled with for many years and in the course of their struggle, various funding models have evolved with time. The main goal of this study was to establish the influence of the principals’ financing initiative on students’ participation rates in Technical, Vocational Education, and Training institutions in Nairobi County, Kenya. To address the main objective of the study, the research focused on four specific objective, which were to examine the influence of principal’s mobilization of financial resources from non-state actors’ on student participation rates, to establish the level to which the principal’s mobilization of financial resources from development partners’ influences student participation rates, ascertain the degree to which the principal’s financial resource mobilization from income-generating activities influences student participation rates and to determine the extent to which principal’s lobby for extra government grants influence students’ participation rates in Technical, Vocational Education, and Training institutions in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study adopted a non-experimental hypothesis-testing research design. The target population of the study was the six TVET institutions within Nairobi City County. The unit of observation included a total population of 6 principals, 12 deputy principals, 6 dean of students, 720 instructors, and 48 000 students. Both census and simple random sampling technique was employed to select the sample size. The sample size comprised of 6 principals, 6 dean of students, 80 section heads, and 780 students. A questionnaire with both closed ended and open ended questions was used to collect data from the selected sample. For quantitative data, both descriptive and inferential statistics analysis was conducted using SPSS version 27 and the results was presented by frequencies and percentages in figures and tables. Pearson Correlation was conducted to the relationship between the variables. For qualitative data, thematic analysis was conducted. The study finding revealed a statistically significant relationship between principal’s mobilizations of financial resources from non-state actors’, development partners, income-generating activities and lobby for extra government grants and students’ participation rates in Technical, Vocational Education, and Training institutions. The p-values; 0.001. 0.001, 0.003 and 0.002 respectively indicated this. Overall, the study concluded that the principal’s financing initiative have a positive impact on student participation rate in Technical, Vocational Education, and Training institutions