Perception of quality assurance and standards officers towards capacity building Programmes offered by Kenya Education staff institute in Nairobi

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to establish the perceptions of Quality Assurance and Standards Officers towards KESI capacity building programmes. This study set out to investigate the following objectives: Identify capacity building programmes offered by KESI, find out the progress of KESI in terms of education managers trained, establish the perceptions of QASOs towards the appropriateness of the KESI capacity building programmes, examine the perceptions of the QASOs towards the relevance of the programmes, and find out the readiness of QASOs to attend KESI capacity building programmes. It was important to carry out the study because KESI plays a very important role in upgrading the skills of education managers in the country A total of seventy-five respondents were used for the study. A questionnaire for QASOs, interview schedules for the Directors KESI and QAS, and a document analysis guide were used to collect data, and the SPSS software was used to analyze the data using .~ descriptive methods. The data was presented in tables

Among the training programmes offered 9Y KJiSI are: Introduction courses in education management for newly appointed principals, deputy principals and heads of departments in secondary schools, senior education management course for principals, deputy principals, deans of students and curriculum and heads of departments in Teacher Training Colleges, education management for head teachers, deputy head teachers of primary schools, sensitization in education management for Boards of Governors of secondary schools and School .._Management Committees in primary schools, education

management courses for education officers and quality assurance officers, and

decentralization of the Kenya Education Sector support Programme (KESSP) at the district and zonal levels. Up to 2008, KESI had trained 2822 principals, 2,480 deputy principals, 2,439 heads of department and 2,305 bursars/ accounts clerks making a total of 9,614 officers in the secondary education segment. In the primary school education sub-sector, KESI had trained 53 principals and deputy principals of Primary Teacher Training Colleges, 54 deans of the same colleges, and 1274 head teachers of primary schools during the same period. It had trained 3461 school management committee and boards of governors embers, 283 KESI staff, 164 associate trainers, 791 Ministry of Education managers (Education officers, Headquarter staff and Semi Autonomous Government Agencies' officers, and Quality Assurance and Standards Officers), and 130 TIVET Managers. Majority of the QASOs involved in the study found the KESI capacity building programmes both appropriate and relevant, and they also showed a willingness to attend KESI capacity building programmes. Among the recommendation made are: upgrading of facilities, adequate staffing and staff rationalization, preparing relevant, demand driven and tailor made programmes, need for the institution to put in place quality assurance benchmarks for education management programmes and need for KESI to coordinate the training of all cadres of education managers to avoid duplication, wastage and conflict of interest. The following suggestions for further research were made: A research on the capacity of

KESI to train all cadres of education managers, and another to find out the perceptions of

other officers who fall within the mandate of KESI to get their perceptions of the institute as a capacity building agency.