ABSTRACT
Despite the MOE efforts to provide safety standards and guidelines, educational institutions in Kenya had a long standing history of ghastly disasters. These led to damage of property, injuries and worst of all loss of precious lives, through incidents of fire and other risk situations. The purpose of this study was to establish factors influencing schools‟ compliance to safety standards guidelines in Kitui Central sub-county, Kitui County. The specific objectives of the study were to ; determine the influence of safety awareness , to investigate the influence of management practices , to explore the influence of schools culture and to examine the influence of schools resources on schools compliance to the Ministry of Education safety standards manual in Kitui Central Sub County, Kitui County The target a population was 31 principals, 210 teachers and 400 student‟s secretaries , this is because they were involved in day to day school management routines . Stratified ,purposive and simple random sampling technique was employed, to divide the schools into three categories (strata) of national schools, county schools and sub-county schools, followed by further division of each in terms of the students‟ gender in the school, giving rise to boys‟ schools, girls‟ schools and mixed day schools. A sample of 325 respondents was selected to participate in the study. These include 110 teachers, 200 students and 15 principals out of the 31 schools within the sub-county under the area of study. Three instruments were developed for the study. These were questionnaire for teachers and students; interview guide for principals and an observation schedule used by the researcher to check whether the schools had adhered to the safety measures.The data collected was grouped according to particular research objectives. For every objective, the responses were tabulated in a frequency distribution table. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics that include determination of the mean, frequency and percentage occurrences where applicable; as well as inferential statistics (Chi-Square and Pearson‟s correlation). Qualitative data was analysed by thematic discussion of themes arising. In this respect, the data will be discussed according to the themes from the responses. . Reliability of instruments was determined by use of test –retest method . Validity of research instruments was done by conducting pilot study before the actual study .The discussions on the data were used to test the validity of the hypotheses . The main goal was to test whether every hypotheses applies to the topic under study or not. .The major findings of the study were the MOE standards and guidelines had not been fully implemented majorly due to inadequate funds and inadequate supervision. The major recommendations therefore were policy makers to follow up ,monitor and evaluate safety situations in all educational institutions and provide funds .Significantly the study findings underscore the importance of adhering to safety standards and quidelines in schools thus education policy makers and other stake holders‟ must come up with strategies to prevent occurrence of disasters in schools.