The Influence of Non -teaching Staff on Indiscipline Among Students in Public Secondary Schools: a Case of Secondary Schools in Masaba Division Kisii District, Kenya

Abstract

Indiscipline in Secondary schools has been a national issue in Kenya as far as educational administration is concerned. There has been such remarkable and ugly faces of it when it turns into arson and murder like in Kyanguli, St. Kizito and Nyeri High School. This issue of indiscipline in schools has to be dealt with thoroughly if any meaningful curriculum is to be implemented. Although there are several factors that lead to indiscipline, much blame has been entirely placed upon the students, teachers' laxity, and head teachers incompetence while other certain underlying administrative factors ignored. One such other factor is the indiscipline of the non-teaching staff in our secondary schools. Therefore, this research study investigated the extent of the influence or involvement of the non- teaching staff in students indiscipline of any aspect in secondary schools in Masaba Division of Kisii Central. The division has twenty secondary schools; eighteen public and two private schools. The study will dealt with only the eighteen public schools. Two of the schools are boys Boarding while the rest are day, mixed secondary schools. Eleven schools have double streams while the rest are single streamed schools. The schools all have an average of ten non-teaching staff per school. One of the schools was used for research piloting while the rest were covered by the research study. All the non- teaching staff from all the schools except the piloting school formed the target sample of study from which data was collected. However, data was collected from sources such as students, teachers and head teachers of the selected schools with reference to information pertaining to non-teaching staff. The data was collected using instruments, which included; questionnaires, interviews, document analysis and personal observations by the researcher. The analysis of data was done by using product moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r). This statistical method was used to determine the relationship between the prevailing behaviours of the non-teaching staff and the cases of indiscipline recorded in sampled schools. In other words, the behaviour patterns of the non- teaching staffs' relationship with indiscipline in the schools was determined using Pearson correlation coefficient.