Influence of school responsibilities on prefects’ academic work performance in public secondary schools in Nakuru Sub-county, Kenya

Abstract

Prefects are student leaders elected or appointed and assigned administrative duties in schools. Besides their school responsibilities, prefects are expected to perform well and attain good grades in class tests and national examinations like other students. According to reports in Nakuru District Education Office, students in public secondary school decline academically when they take up prefects’ responsibilities. Several factors have been put forward that include influence of newly acquired school responsibilities. This study sought to investigate the influence of school responsibilities on prefects’ academic work performance in public secondary schools in Nakuru Sub-County, Kenya. The study used descriptive survey research design. The population of study consisted of 25 deputy headteachers, 135 class teachers and 450 school prefects in 25 public secondary schools. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 15 secondary schools and deputy headteachers that participated in the study. A sample of 45 class teachers and 150 school prefects were selected using simple random sampling technique. Three instruments; the Deputy Headteachers’ interview guide (DHTIG), Class teachers’ questionnaires (CTQ) and Prefects’ questionnaires (PQ) were used to collect data. The three data collection tools were checked for content and validity by a team of four experts from the Department Curriculum Instruction and Educational Management, Egerton University. DHTIG, CTQ and PQ were piloted for reliability, their reliability coefficients were 0.70, 0.71 and 0.73 respectively. The reliability was estimated using the Cronbach’s Alpha. Data was analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.2. Descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA and Post-Hoc tests were used to analyze data. The study established that; Majority of the prefects (79.4 %), class teachers (63.8%) and deputy headteachers (78.6%) were of the view that prefects performed their school responsibilities well. The results also showed that there was no significant difference in mean scores of students’ academic work performance before and after appointment as prefects. The results further revealed that there was a significant difference on prefects’ academic mean scores by school responsibilities performance category. The study is also expected to; assist prefects improve their academic performance by striking a balance between their responsibilities and academics; to inform the policy makers in the Ministry of Education and secondary schools administration on how to improve academic work performance of school prefects.