Issues And Challenges Experienced By Newly Appointed Secondary School Principals And The Strategies Used To Cope In Mombasa County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The study explored issues and challenges facing newly appointed principals in public secondary schools in Mombasa County as they discharge their administrative responsibilities. The main focus was to identify and describe the challenges faced and strategies used by the principals to address challenges. This was done by involving ten respondents (principals) who were sampled using stratified sampling technique. The study was guided by the following research objectives: to establish issues and challenges faced by newly appointed principals in the operational management task areas and to determine strategies which the newly appointed principals adopt to address identified challenges. Descriptive research design was adopted hence guided data collection and analysis. Concerning theoretical framework, the study adopted management theory developed by Katz (1974) in an attempt to account for the issues and challenges experienced by newly appointed principals in Mombasa County. Questionnaire was used as the main instrument to collect data which (data) was analysed using descriptive statistics through the aid of Statistical Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer program. The results were presented in tables, graphs and pie – charts. The chi-square test was performed to determine whether challenges newly appointed principals faced in the three types of schools were different. The chi-square showed that the challenges were equally distributed among the three types of public secondary schools in Mombasa County (p>0.05). That is, analysis showed that the newly appointed principals faced common challenges and adopted strategies to address the challenges regardless of the type of secondary schools they headed. The challenges that the study established revolve around operational management task areas such as: selection, recruitment and management of teachers and support staff, student discipline management, procurement of instructional materials, financial management, school surrounding community/school relations and management of school physical facilities/resources. Finally, based on the results of the study, the researcher recommended that education policy makers such as Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should enhance capacity building opportunities tailored at equipping newly appointed principals with skills to address the most faced challenges. These challenges include: attitude towards work, student poor performance, truancy among students, and staff dispute resolution among others which were established in the study.