Abstract:
Education and training are important for economic growth as they increase labour productivity through skills, knowledge, values and attitudes they impart. Vision 2030 aims at making Kenya a newly industrialized middle income level country by the year 2030. Youth Polytechnics (YPs) are among the avenues through which craft and artisan level personnel needed for this are developed. However, employers complain that graduates from YPs do not demonstrate possession of relevant knowledge and skills failing to perform work related tasks effectively. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of physical facilities, curriculum, tutors‟ competence and principals‟ leadership skills on the quality of public Youth Polytechnic graduates produced by these institutions in Kisii County. The study adopted a correlational research design. The accessible population comprised of 29 Principals, 65 tutors from metal processing, garment making and motor vehicle technology, an infinite number of Jua Kali employers and Youth Polytechnic graduate employees. A sample of 29 principals, 65 tutors, 99 employers and 99 employed Youth Polytechnic graduates participated in the study. The principals and tutors were purposively selected through a complete census. Employers and employed YP graduates were selected through snowball technique. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was used to estimate reliability. The reliability was 0.81, 0.79, and 0.78 for employees, tutors and graduates‟ questionnaires respectively. These reliability coefficients were more than 0.70, an acceptable threshold for studies in social science. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data. Descriptive statistics used were frequencies, means and percentages while inferential statistics were simple regression analysis. Results were presented using Tables. Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that physical facilities statistically significantly predicted quality of YP graduates (β = .343, t(3.542), p = .001). The findings further revealed that tutors‟ competence was a statistically significant predictor of quality of youth polytechnic graduates (β =.231, t(2.327), p =.022). The results however revealed that curriculum was not a statistically significant predictor of quality of graduates (β = .093, t(.915), p = .363). Finally, principals‟ leadership skills were not a statistically significant predictor of graduates‟ quality (β = .057, t(.558), p = .578). The study recommends that the Kisii County government should increase its funding to equip the institutions with physical facilities. There is also need to upgrade the competence level of tutors through in service training.
