Influence of institutional factors on students performance at kenya certificate of secondary education in public secondary schools in Mbooni east sub county, Kenya.

Abstract

The study was on institutional factors influencing students’ performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary education (KCSE) in mixed public secondary schools in Mbooni East SubCounty Makueni County, Kenya. Students’ performance in KSCE has been influenced by various factors which include inadequate teachers, inadequate teaching and learning resources, inadequate physical facilities and students’ characteristics. The study was guided by the following objectives; to access the extent to which teachers’ characteristics, students’ characteristics, adequacy of physical resources and adequacy of teaching and learning resources influence students’ performance. The study was premised on Human capital theory developed by Adam Smith in the 18th century and John Stuart Mill in the 19th. which holds that the wellbeing of a society is a function of the knowledge and skills of individuals. The study used descriptive survey design because it administered questionnaires and observation check list to collect data. The targeted population was 35 mixed secondary schools consisting of 35 principals, 35 director of studies and 1823 form three students. Simple random sampling was used to select 11(30%) mixed schools out of 35 mixed schools, 11 principals and 11 directors of studies were purposively selected. There were about 1823 form three students in the 35 mixed secondary schools where 88(5%) were randomly selectedcomprising of four boys and fourgirls to participate in the study.The study used Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) IBM version 20 to analyze data. The analyzed data was then presented through tabular representation of frequency tables, pie charts and bar graphs.The major findings showsthat most schools in the study locale had inadequate trained teachers as revealed by 90.9% of the principals and directors of studies. Majority (72.8%) of the students revealed that physical resources were inadequate while (80.5%) of the students indicated that teaching and learning resources were inadequate, with most public mixed secondary schools lacking the critical human and instructional resources thereby leading to poor performance in KCSE which hindered students’ transition to tertiary and University collages. The study made recommendations that should be put in place in order to improve students’ performance in the sub county that, the devolved government should provide adequate teaching and learning resources, employ more teachers to reduce teacher to student ratio and carry out resource rationalization assessment in different categories of schools to ensure equitable distribution of relevant and adequate infrastructure