Selected socio-Technical Issues Influencing Effective use of ICT in the Management of Public Secondary schools in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

Abstract

There is an increasing interest, attention and investment being put into the use of ICT in education worldwide. The Ministry of Education Science and Technology in Kenya has developed an Information Communication Technology (ICT) strategy which outlines how ICT will be adopted and utilized to improve access, quality and equity in the delivery of education services in Kenya. With the introduction of computer-based technology in schools, major changes should be observed in the way education is managed, but there is still minimal evidence on the impact of these technologies in public secondary schools.” The general objective of the study was to analyze selected socio-technical issues influencing effective management of public secondary schools in Uasin-Gishu County in Kenya. Specifically, the study sought: to find out how administrators’ attitude toward ICT affects effective management of public secondary schools; to determine how the frequency of use of ICT affect the effective management of public secondary schools; to establish how administrators’ access to ICT facilities affect the effective management of public secondary schools; and to find out how administrators’ ICT technical competencies affects the effective management of public secondary schools in Uasin-Gishu County. The study was based on Open Systems Theory and The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The researcher adopted the correlational and descriptive research design. The population for the study was 166 public secondary schools in Uasin-Gishu County. The sample size used was 61 principals, 61 school bursars, 61 school secretaries and 6 Sub-County Directors. Stratified random sampling method was used to select the respondents. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaire measured on likert type interval scales of 1-5. Reliability of the research instrument was tested against Cronbach’s alpha coefficient where an overall reliability score of 0.814 was achieved while validity was gauged using panel of experts, ensuring that the indicators of each variable were within the same construct and operationalizing the instrument as per the variables. Descriptive statistics comprised means and standard deviations were used to analyze the data while hypotheses were tested using multivariate linear regression model to generate relevant statistics. The findings indicated that administrators’ attitude on ICT has a significant positiverelationship (R = 0.637, β1= 0.637, R2=0.405,p<0.05) with effective management of schools indicating that a positive change in administrators’ attitude leads to adequate improvement on management of schools. ICT frequency of use and effective school management were also found to have a significant positive relationship (R =0.549, β1= 0.449, R2=0.302, p<0.05) demonstrating that whenever school administrators’ frequently employ ICT facilities in their management functions there was a significant improvement on effective management of schools.Based on the study findings, there was also a significant positive relationship between access to ICT facilities and effective management of schools (R =0.383, β1= 0.287, R2=0.147,p<0.05) which demonstrated that those administrators’ who have access to ICT facilities tend to manage their schools better. Lastly, the study established a significant positive relationship between administrator’s ICT technical competencies and effective school management (R =0.588, β1= 0.506, R2=0.346,p<0.05). Implying that administrators’ skill set are necessary in leveraging on ICT facilities to realize success in management of schools. On the basis of these findings, it was concluded that the Ministry of education should: ensure that the administrators develop a favourable attitude; frequent use of ICTs in school management is encouraged; resources are allocated for the acquisition of ICT facilities and administrators given training on how to utilize ICTs their schools to enable them achieve effective management. The study may be useful to stakeholders in the education sector in providing information on the state of ICT in public secondary schools in Kenya.