The Forms and Modes of Training Received by School Principals before and after Appointment: A Case of Nandi County, Kenya

Abstract

Skills and knowledge is a prerequisite for any given activity or labor to be performed. Acquisition of these skills and knowledge are significantly important because most of the functions of an organization cannot be realized without them. Previous studies indicate that experience and level of education are the yard stick to appointing any principal of a secondary school from professional teachers. Despite the fact that they are professionally trained as teachers, they carry out educational management roles, which are meant for professionally trained Human Resource Managers (HRM). To this end these Principals require some training on the new roles they take up after getting the new appointment. This study thus sought to identify the forms of training and the mode used in training the School Principals in Nandi County, Kenya. The study used a Survey research design with a target population of 140 secondary school principals drawn from Nandi County. Census sampling was used to select the study sample. Data collection was done using self-administered questionnaires after which Coding of responses was done using Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) for windows Version 16. Analysis of the data was done through descriptive statistics. Data was presented in form of frequency tables and charts. This paper concludes that Lack of human resource management skills and background of the same make the principals of secondary schools not to realize the need of career development of their staff. From the findings it was noted that majority of these principals are graduate teachers therefore they don’t see the need of allowing others to advance their career and skills since all of them are at the same level.

Keywords: Training Levels, Forms of Training, Secondary school, Principals, Appointment.