Stakeholders’ Participation as an Institutional Determinant of Strategic Plan Implementation in Public Secondary Schools in Kenya

This study sought to investigate institutional determinants of strategic plan implementation in public secondary schools in Machakos County, Kenya. The study objective sought to determine the influence of the stakeholders’ participation in school development plans on strategic plan implementation. The study used Descriptive survey research design. The study targeted 351 public secondary school principals 1,404 class teachers, and 1,755 academic Heads of Departments from which a sample of 105 principals, 176 academic HoDs and 140 class teachers was derived. Stratified sampling technique was used to sample the respondents. A questionnaire and an interview guide were the data collection tools. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyses data. Data was presented by use of frequency distribution tables, and pie charts. Person’s product-moment correlation Coefficient and multiple linear regression was used to analyze the inferential data. The set level of hypothesis testing was set at a 0.05 level of significance. This study may be significant to the school Board of Management members and policy makers in terms of know how skills on formulation, implementation and evaluation of strategic plans implementation in schools. This study found that stakeholder participation in school development plans have a positive and significant influence on the strategic plan implementation. Based on these findings, the study recommended that the stakeholders’ need to honor the invitation to take part in the school development plans in the strategic plan and in essence parents ought to be part and parcel in formulating the school strategic plan, and ensure the strategic plan implementation through school fees payment in time. Likewise Constituency Development Fund as stakeholders need to perform its duty in order to ensure adequate strategic plan implementation. The researcher conducted Hypothesis testing using a multiple regression model at the 5 percent level of significance. The results of hypothesis testing gave a positive coefficient of 0.2519 on stakeholder participation in school development plans was realized with a p-value of 0.000 indicating a statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Hence we reject the hypothesis that, stakeholder participation in school development plans has an effect on strategic plan implementation. This indicates that, stakeholder participation in school development plans does have a statistically significant effect on strategic plan implementation in public secondary schools in Machakos County.