Revitalization of the Teaching Fraternity in Kenya Through Performance Contracting

Abstract

In order to transform a public service that by and large is characterized by low service delivery, Kenya is struggling to adopt the New Public Management approach. Performance contracting in particular has attracted a lot of debate in the recent past as a strategy in attaining performance in public institutions. In view of this, the education sector has attempted to adopt performance contracting in schools but little has been achieved due to resistance. However a number of insights and lessons have been learnt that can guide reformers and policy makers in education to revitalize the teaching fraternity through the re-introduction of performance contracting. This paper therefore discusses performance contracting as a New Public Management mechanism in education; highlights the indicators and pre-requisites for performance contacting; discusses the experience of the performance contracting in the teaching fraternity in relation to its failure and lessons learnt and finally gives suggestions to be undertaken if the strategy has to be re-introduced to re-vitalize the service delivery in Kenyan schools.

Keywords: Re-vitalization, Teaching Fraternity, New Public Management, Performance Contracting