Factors influencing the implementation of the teachers performance appraisal systems; a case of public secondary schools in Westlands constituency in Kenya

Abstract

Performance management or appraisal is one of the areas an organization can use to unlock the full potential of their people. Wendel (2003) defined performance appraisal and review as a formal, systematic assessment of how well employees are performing their jobs in relation to established standards and the dialogue about that assessment with employees involved. The research‟s main purpose is to find out factors influencing the implementation of teachers‟ performance appraisal system in public secondary schools. Specifically the research will seek to identify the effects of performance standards on the implementation of teachers performance appraisal system in public secondary schools; assess the importance of monitoring on the implementation of teachers performance appraisal system in public secondary schools; determine the consequence of appraisal techniques on the implementation of teachers performance appraisal system in public secondary schools; assess the impact of feedback on the implementation of teachers performance appraisal system in public secondary schools. The research narrowed its undertakings into performance standards, monitoring and appraisal techniques and feedback. The research applied a descriptive research design and the target population was 89 teachers from Westlands Constituency. The research applied the census sampling techniques where the entire population was considered to constitute the sample size. Purposive sampling was used to select the key informants, Selfadministered questionnaires were used as the major data collection instrument and they were issued to all the respondents in the sample size, interview schedule was used to collect data from the informants who were TSC officials. Validity of the research instrument was ascertained by seeking the opinions of experts in the field of study. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. Quantitative data was sorted and corded using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS V. 21.0) software. Research analysis demonstrated the collected data analysis and displayed the result of the study according to the research questions. The study findings revealed that the study revealed that majority of the respondents strongly agreed that performance appraisal was important to the teaching fraternity others agreed, disagreed, while only a few of the respondents strongly disagreed to the fact that performance appraisal was important for teachers, from the findings it was revealed that performance was important to the teaching fraternity, majority of the respondents strongly agreed that continuous performance monitoring did affect the performance appraisals; the findings therefore revealed that continuous performance monitoring affects greatly performance appraisals among the teaching fraternity, the findings reveals that the understanding of the appraisal techniques across the teaching staff varies considerably as shown by the findings, a good number of the staff understand and appreciates the application of the techniques while others are not well aware of the techniques equivalently, feedback influence teachers performance appraisals as reported by the majority of the respondents, the study concludes that performance is an important element to the teaching fraternity, further the study concludes that quality standards, planning and Job Analysis influenced greatly on the performance of teachers, the study further concludes that that performance standards are high among the teachers, continuous performance monitoring affects greatly performance appraisals among the teaching fraternity, further the study concludes that Gantts Charts, PERTs, CPM, overall schedules, resource allocations and weak breakdown structures have often been used as planning function tools in the teacher performance appraisal systems. The recommends that there is need for enhanced performance planning, better performance monitoring during the year and ongoing feedback during the year should be given an in depth consideration.