How Strategy Evaluation Affects Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Bungoma County, Kenya

Abstract

The Ministry of Education directed that all public secondary schools must formulate and implement strategic plans; some schools have been faced with the challenges in their strategy management. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of strategy evaluation on academic performance in public secondary schools in Kenya. The target population for the study was public secondary school principals, teachers, and students in Bungoma County. The county has nine administrative Sub-Counties, each with a Sub-County Education Director, a total of 258 secondary schools having 258 schools’ principals, 1,290 heads of departments, 258 school bursars from public secondary schools. The main tools for data collection for this study were questionnaires, interview schedules and document analysis guides. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed. The results of the study illustrated that there was strong positive and significant relationship between strategy evaluation and academic performance in public secondary schools. It is concluded that effective execution of strategic evaluation activities like review of academic performance, setting and achieving targets, involvement of strategic planning team, conducting of SWOT analysis and conducting of periodic performance appraisal. Recommendations of the study are that schools should ensure development of evaluation tools and processes that are aligned with school goals and objectives. Schools should make use of the evaluation results to inform decision-making and improve strategies over time. The findings of this study may be useful in the generation of new knowledge to the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders in education in their improvement of policies and practices of the effectiveness of strategy implementation on academic performance in secondary schools.