Effects of Strategic Management Practices and Oversight Boards on Management of Public Secondary Schools in Busia County, Kenya

Abstract

Strategic management practices as an effective tool of strengthening performance in educational institutions has become a subject of interest. The quality of education in public secondary schools is below the international desirable standards. The purpose of this study was to establish the Strategic Management practices and oversight roles of boards of public secondary schools in Nambale Sub County. The study adopted the descriptive cross sectional survey research design. The target population for this study was the 20 registered public secondary schools in Nambale Sub County. Stratified sampling was adopted so as to give each item in the population an equal probability of being selected. The sample population of 8 schools was selected randomly from each stratum. The data was grouped into various categories and entered in the SPSS software to facilitate the analysis using descriptive statistics. Frequency distribution tables were used to summarize the data from respondents. The data was presented in frequency distributions tables and pie charts for ease of understanding and analysis. The study established that 32.5% of secondary schools had adopted strategic management practices in the past. The study further established that the schools which had developed strategic plans only 15% of these schools implemented plans fully. The study concluded that strategic management practices had a positive relationship with competitive advantage of the organizations and that all public secondary schools should embrace strategic management in order to achieve a competitive advantage.