Assessment of human resource management practices and performance of private primary schools in Homa bay county, Kenya

Abstract

There has been a trend in Homa-Bay County that private primary schools which are expected to perform much higher than their public counterparts continue to register dismal performances in national examinations yet their pupil-teacher ratio is more favorable, 1:45 compared to public primary schools’ 1:79. Data from ministry of education has shown that private primary schools mean score in Homa Bay has declined from 201.37 in 2010 to 198.24 in 2014, which is also below average. The reasons behind this declining performance has been hypothesized by stakeholders to be attributed to human resource practices mainly teacher selection and recruitment, teacher appraisal strategies, teacher training and remuneration. While studies have shown that effective human resource management practices enhances good performance, the effective application of these practices and how they can affect performance in Homa-Bay County has not been investigated. The study sought to determine the role of humanresource management practices on performance of private primary schools in Homa Bay County, Kenya. Specifically, the objectives were to establish the effect of teacher selection strategies on performance of private primary schools, determine the effect of performance appraisal on performance of private schools, determine the role of teacher training on performance of private primary schools and establish the effect of teachers remuneration on performance of primary schools in Homa -Bay County, Kenya. The study adopted Ex-post facto research design. The target population was 85 private primary school heads in schools that enrolled pupils for KCPE in 2014. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study whereby Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires to the head teachers while secondary data was obtained from the records at the private primary schools and at the county ministry of education’s office. Data validity was tested by using the Content validity index, which was attained while reliability was achieved above the recommended value of 0.7. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics to give output in form of mean, standard deviation and frequencies, and results presented in form of tables. Inferential statistics was used to generate simple linear regression model. The study found that teacher selection strategies had a significant influence on performance (β=0.549, p=.000) and explained 30.2% variance , performance appraisal had a significant effect (β=0.623, p=.000) and explained 38.8% variance in performance, teacher training had a significant effect (β=0.453, p=.000) and accounted for 20.5% variance in performance and finally, reward system had a significant effect (β=0.447, p=.000) and accounted for 20.0% variance in performance. These findings imply that all the selected variable had an effect on performance. The study therefore concluded teacher selection strategies, performance appraisal, reward system and teacher training have an effect on performance and recommended that private schools should work with education stakeholders to improve these practices. The findings of this study may contribute valuable information on the human resource practices influencing academic performance in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. Finally, the study would increase the body of knowledge on Human Resource Management it would be a useful point of reference for further studies to other scholars, managers, policy makers and researchers.