School Based Factors Influencing Students’ Performance At Kenya Certificate Of Secondary Education In Narok – North District, Kenya

Abstract

The provision of quality education and subsequent high performance in school is inevitable for the realization of millennium development goals and the vision 2030. The purpose of the study was to investigate the school based factors influencing students performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination in public secondary school in Narok North District. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Complaints about the poor performance in Kenya certificate of secondary Education examinations from parents, teachers and stakeholders made this area of study one of interest to the researcher. The target population comprised of 19 public secondary schools with a total population of 901 form four students, 240 teachers and 19 principals. The study, further used stratified sampling to select 201 students’, simple random sampling to select 48 teachers, 6 principals were selected using purposive sampling technique. Findings of the study revealed that the school –based factors which influence students performance were inadequate instructional materials. Some of the schools in the district did not have adequate teachers. Cases of teachers being transferred from the schools without replacement led to inadequate teachers which affected teaching and learning and ultimately affecting performance. Teachers gave assignments often but were not able to mark the assignments due to much work load and many classes to teach. The study revealed that most of the schools had inadequate physical facilities like the libraries, laboratories, classrooms and dormitories. Based on the findings, the study made recommendations to arrest the school based factors which affect performance. The recommendations were as follows: The government should provide teachers to schools so that the teaching load could be minimized hence enabling teachers to perform effectively. School should be provided with learning resources by the government and parents to facilitate learning hence improves the academic performance thus the government and parents could assist in the provision of the required resources. Teachers should be provided with the opportunities for more exposure through in service programs. All these suggestions are geared towards improving academic performance of Public Secondary Schools in Narok North District. The study is therefore significant in that it is expected to contribute to the advancement of knowledge about school based factors that influence public secondary school performance.