Effect of teachers' motivation on Kenya certificate of secondary education performance; a case of Tigania East district, Meru county

Abstract

In Tigania East District where this research was based, performance in K.C.S.E has been• low, and reasons for the poor academic performance have not been fully established. The study therefore sought to investigate the effect of teachers' motivation on Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education performance in public secondary schools in Tigania East District of Meru County. Specifically, the study sought to establish the effect of teachers' remuneration, institutional working conditions, head teachers' supervision and, availability of teaching/learning resources on performance in KCSE in the district. This study adopted a survey research design and both qualitative and quantitative data was collected. The study target population was 294 teachers and 45 head teachers within the Tigania East District. Stratified random sampling technique was used in selecting the sample size. A sample of 88 teachers and 14 head teachers was selected. Primary data was collected using structured and unstructured questionnaire. Secondary data was obtained from district education office and individual school records. Data was collected through delivering the questionnaires to the respondents. Data was cleaned, coded, classified and summarized into categories. The researcher used the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 to help in analyzing the data. Descriptive statistics • (frequencies, percentages,) and inferential statistics (chi square) were mainly used in analysis. Results were presented in form of frequency tables, bar graphs, pie charts and percentages. This study established that there was a significant relationship between teachers' satisfaction with their remuneration and students' performance in KCSE. It further revealed that there was a significant relationship between institutional working conditions and students' performance in KCSE. Regarding head teachers supervision, the study established that there . was a significant relationship between head teachers . supervision and students' performance in KCSE. The study also showed that there was a significant relationship between satisfaction with available learning/teaching resources in the schools and students' academic performance in KCSE ainong public secondary schools in Tigariia East District. The study recommends that• attractive career structures for secondary school teachers need to be urgently introduced with regular promotions based• on clearly specified and transparent performance-related criteria. Teachers who work at hardship rural schools should also be given accelerated promotion and/or preferential access to qualification upgrading opportunities. Hence a more rigorous study can be carried out to cover the whole country and to fully understand the effect that performance-based reward has on student outcomes and consequently on teachers' performance, a wider study is required to consider how increased or decreased rewards affect teacher behaviour.