Capability development and competitive advantage of private primary schools in Mombasa county

Abstract

This study sought to establish the effect of capability development on competitive advantage of private primary schools in Mombasa County. The study followed a descriptive research design and collected primary data mainly through selfadministered questionnaires. The target population was the private primary schools in Mombasa County. The researcher used stratified random sampling. The four strata were the sub-counties in Mombasa county namely, Changamwe, Likoni, Mvita, Kisauni. The target sample was 50 schools, and ensured at least 10 each from a sub county. The target respondents were private primary schools proprietors, partners and head teachers from schools under review. In total, 48 fully completed questionnaires were collected which is equal to 96% response rate. The results established that 50% of the schools have less than an acre piece of land while 33.3% of the schools are built on exactly one acre. Also, the finding established that the schools have an average of 34 teachers: 19 male and 15 female. Further, the schools rely on fees as their major source of financing, and apply stringent debt (fee) collection, whereby the parents were required to pay school fees within the first week of each new term. In addition, the schools have reasonable facility to support learning and co-curricular activities. The data adhered to regression assumptions; normality, homoscedasticity, multicollinearity and autocorrelation. The obtained R and R-Square statistics were 0.738 and 0.544 respectively. Since the coefficient of determination R was positive, there is a positive relationship between capability development and a school’s strategic advantage as measured by the school performance. A Pearson product moment of correlation (R-Square) of 0.544 indicates a moderately strong relationship. The obtained coefficients for capability development as measured by the predictor variables; Physical infrastructure, Human resources, Financial resources, Intellectual resources were large and positive, and their corresponding p-values were all less than 0.05, hence the coefficients were statistically significant. The study concludes that there is a positive moderately strong relationship between capability development and strategic advantage of a school. In the light of the findings, the study recommends that managers of private schools should apply competitive strategies in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage.