Influence of Development Fund Pricing Guidelines on the Quality of Education in Public Sub-County Secondary Schools in Busia County, Kenya

Hezekiah Adwar Othoo – Department of Education Psychology, Management and Policy Studies, Alupe University, Kenya.
Julius Gogo – Department of Education Management and Foundation, Maseno University, Kenya,
Carren Olendo – Department of Education Management and Foundation, Maseno University, Kenya
Email: hezruakas@gmail.com

Abstract: The academic performance of public secondary schools in Busia County has been declining for the past three consecutive years below the national mean scores with 3.80 in 2018, 3.68 in 2019 and 3.51 in 2020, the worst affected being Sub County schools. Pricing guidelines issued to schools from the government are dependent on the economic status of the parents for success. For a county like Busia with high poverty index of 69.3%, there could be challenges of resourcing schools for quality attainment. The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of development fund pricing guidelines on the availability of adequate infrastructure to public sub-county secondary schools in Busia County. Stratified random sampling was used to select 60 schools from 114, and purposive sampling to select 7 Sub County Directors of education, for the study. Questionnaires for principals, interview schedule for sub county directors of education; observation checklist and document analysis guide were used to collect data. The researcher pre-tested the instruments using 10 schools in the study population and obtained a reliability of 0.8 for Principals’ questionnaire. Quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics involving percentages, mean sco res, correlations. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The findings indicated that the development fund pricing guidelines did not avail adequate infrastructure to schools with a weak positive Pearson’s correlation index (R2=0.003); This study might help education economists and planners to come up with effective methods of pricing secondary education in Kenya for quality purposes.