Challenges in teacher recruitment and distribution in public secondary schools in Butula Sub-County

In Kenya, weaknesses in human resource planning has affected training and deployment of teachers and thus distorted their distribution and utilization. In Butula Sub-County, there is uneven distribution of the teacher resource across the various categories of public secondary schools yet availability of teachers to implement any curriculum in any institution of learning is very vital. The purpose of this study therefore was to find out the challenges in teacher recruitment and distribution in public secondary schools in Butula Sub-county, Kenya. The study was grounded in Self Discrepancy Theory as developed by E. Tory Higgins (1987) and adapted by Malusu (1990). The objectives of this study were, to determine the procedure of teacher recruitment and selection used in public secondary schools in Butula sub-county and to establish the challenges in teacher recruitment and distribution in public secondary schools in Butula sub-county. The Descriptive survey research design was used to collect information from a study population of 164 teachers, 23 principals and 2 staffing officers. Saturated sampling technique was used to select the entire study population as the sample size. Questionnaires were used to collect data from secondary school teachers and principals while interviews were administered to the Sub-County Staffing Officer and seven selected principals. Reliability of the instruments was established through a pilot study in two schools and a coefficient of r=0.748 was reported. On the other hand, validity of the instruments was determined by the expert judgment of the lecturers in the School of Education, JOOUST University. Quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The test of significance was computed at α = 0.05. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was used to analyze the data. For the qualitative data a thematic analysis approach was used. The study found out that the procedure of recruitment and selection of teachers was based on the TSC policy in most schools. The study further established that the teacher recruitment and selection in public secondary schools is faced by a number of challenges which makes the staffing policy ineffective. As a result, there was lopsided distribution of teachers across the schools, departments and even subjects in the sub-county. The study therefore, recommends that Teachers Service Commission steps up supervision and monitoring of the entire process of staffing schools and address the challenges so as to ensure effectiveness of implementation of the policy.