Perceived Teacher Related Factors Influencing Academic Performance Among Public Secondary School Students in Suba Sub-County, Homa Bay County, Kenya

Abstract

Education, all over the world, is regarded as key to overall national development as it improves the productive capacity of its citizens. Academic performance in terms of grades and mean scores may be a yardstick propelling students from secondary schools to acquire university education. Teachers play a significant role in academic achievement, and therefore factors such as workloads, absenteeism, commitment, and burnout are presumed to affect academic performance. In Suba Sub – County, in the period 2012 – 2014, percentage pass in KCSE was 38.3%, 39.2%, and 32.5% while the mean grade was 4.5, 5.2, and 5.3, respectively. Performance in the neighboring Sub-County was higher in terms of students with C+ and above and the mean grade. For example, Homa-Bay Sub-County had a mean of 6.2, 6.3 and 6.8 for the years 2012 – 2014. There was also a noted increase in the number of teachers seeking transfers deviating from the average in the region by almost 9 percent. This situation has become a concern whose contributing factors needed to be established. The purpose of this study was to examine teacher- related factors influencing students' academic performance in public secondary schools in Suba Sub-County. The objective of the study was to determine teacher perceived factors that influence performance with key focus on teacher workload; teacher absenteeism; teacher commitment and teacher burnout. The study was guided by the conceptual framework, which showed the relationship between teacher factors and academic performance. The study used descriptive and Correlation survey designs. The study population comprised of 33 principals, 164 teachers and 1,035 form four students from 33 schools within Suba Sub-County. Stratified sampling was used to determine sample size, which consisted of 310 form four students, 49 teachers and 30 principals in the four existing zones; Kigoto, Gwassi, Kiabuya and Central. Two experts in the Department of Education Management and foundation were used for the determination of both face and content validity. To ascertain the reliability of the study, test re-test method was used on two schools and data obtained correlated using Pearson r at an alpha level 0.05. The coefficients of principals’ and teachers’ questionnaire were 0.82 and 0.79 respectively while that of students was 0.76 and since they were higher than 0.70, the instruments were deemed reliable. Qualitative data from the questionnaires and interviews were collated, transcribed and analyzed using emergent themes. Quantitative data for performance was also collected from government offices of the Ministry of Education in Homa-Bay County. This study revealed that influence of teachers’ workload on academic performance was significant r =.428 and also that for every one unit increase in teacher workload, there was a decrease in students’ academic achievement as signified by the coefficient (-.763). This study established that for every one-unit increase in teacher absenteeism, there was a decline in performance by 0.440 units in performance index in KCSE. Perceived lower teacher commitment was noted to reduce performance by 1.106 units in performance index in KCSE while teacher burnout influence students’ performance by -0.760 in KCSE index. Interpreting significance at 5% significance level, all factors’ influence was found to be significant as indicated by ANOVA analysis. The P-values were 0.00, 0.043, 0.00 and 0.002 for perceived teacher workload, absenteeism, commitment and burnout respectively. From the results of the study, it has been concluded that it is important to reduce workload by hiring more teachers, reduce absenteeism with tighter control in monitoring attendance of teachers in the classroom and reduce commitment and burnout through welfare considerations by the school boards. All education stakeholders should be involved in enhancing students’ academic performance, and the teachers should observe best practices in the performance of their duties.