Influence of Principals’ Teaching Staff Development on Students’ Academic Performance in Kisumu County, Kenya

Transformational leadership was operationalized as setting direction, staff development, building collaborative cultures, staffing the program, and academic performance as the KCSE mean score of a school for the period 2014 – 2018. The study arose from the fact that, high school principals are working hard yet the academic performance of public secondary schools in Kisumu County has remained generally poor. Between 2014 and 2018, only 26.9% of students from Kisumu County scored at least C+, and the average mean score in KCSE for the period was only 4.23, below 7.0, the cut out entry. At least 65% of the candidates from Kisumu County did not proceed to university education during the period. Several educational stakeholders had linked school leadership to the poor academic performance, but without empirical evidence. The study specifically investigated the influence of teaching staff development on the students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Kisumu County. The study adopted a cross sectional survey research design. The target population consisted of 204 principals, 2,196 teachers, and 13,213 Form Three students. In sampling, Krejcie and Morgan table was used to find 152 principals, 333 teachers and 378 students, from 152 schools. Data was collected using questionnaires, interviews, observation and document analysis, and analyzed using simple linear, simple correlation, and stepwise regression with dummy variables, at .05 level of significance. The study tested specific hypothesis that staff development by principals do not have a significant influence on academic performance. The study found 7 significant associations at α = .01, (ϒSDR*DVP = .594, p = .000; ϒSDR*BCC = .476, p = .000; ϒDVP*BCC = .719, p = .000; ϒ =.416, p =.000; ϒ = .685, p =.000; ϒDVP*ACP = .239, p =.000; ϒBCC*ACP = .212, p = .000) and one significant association at α = .05, ϒSDR*ACP =.203, p = .012. The study found that staff development (good) [F (2,149) = 4.027), p = .020, R2 adj = .039, t (149) = 2.604, p = .010]. The study recommends that the ministry of education should empower principals with resources that will enable them to empower their teaching staff by training them on various needs that may arise in the society from time to time, and since the society is dynamic continuous provision of resources by the ministry would be ideal.