Effective Management of Human Resources in Educational Institutions in Kenya (PDF)

Academic Paper from the year 2023 in the subject Pedagogy - School System, Educational and School Politics, grade: University, , course: Education management, language: English, abstract: For long, education institutions in Kenya have been run on the basis of management acumen of individual principals. This led to fluctuations in performance and output of these institutions, leading to unpredictability. Some institutions ended up being a pale shadow of their former selves, as others short up in effectiveness just by a mere change of the principal. This led to a relook at aspects such as succession management, mentorship, and a new approach of preparing a new school manager, borrowing from human resource management trainings.

This book looks at how we can borrow and customize training practises that have been tried and tested in other fields in order to enrich the Education management career and lead to consistency and improvement in management practise at school. This is borne by the fact that a school has many different people in many fields working together, and so they need to be engaged in a combination/matrix that maximizes on output while using personnel efficiently. This book therefore aims at providing the basics needed to realize this dream.

The government and the private sector may put up wonderful institutions with the best infrastructural facilities, equipment and qualified teachers, but all these would only address part of the problem of achieving success in learning. Both the teaching and non-teaching staffs need to be treated fairly in order to achieve academic excellence. This means until the human needs of all those engaged at school are addressed, facilities alone cannot offer the match craved for performance. At school level, the government, parents and society look upon the head teachers to provide that much needed coordination and conducive environment for teachers, learners and support staff to achieve the desired targets.

The foregoing puts a lot of pressure and high levels of expectation on the shoulders of heads of institutions (HOIs) to methodically deploy the human resources at hand to achieve the set targets. Woe unto the head teachers (with their administration teams) who do not deploy their human relations and soft skills positively to build a strong team and win the confidence of such a team.