Influence of the Working Conditions of the Support Staff on their Work Performance in Secondary Schools in Rarieda Sub-County, Kenya

Support staff plays a pivotal role in secondary schools by helping to reduce none teaching load on teachers. However, they do this under very difficult conditions such as low salaries and wages, work more than 8 hours a day, are required to work in undesignated areas and are not recognized in their work. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to establish the influence of the working conditions of the support staff on work performance in public secondary schools in Rarieda Sub-County. Objectives of the study were to: examine the working conditions of support staff; establish the influence of the work conditions on performance of support staff; determine challenges faced by support staff in their duties and find out how support staffs cope with challenges faced. A conceptual frame work was used to guide the study. The conceptual frame work proposes that if work conditions are favourable then work performance improves. The study population consisted of 180 support staff, 34 head teachers and 34 BOM chairpersons from 34 secondary schools. Saturated sampling technique was used to select 31 head teachers and 31 BOM chairpersons. Saturated sampling technique used to select 150 support staff. The instruments of data collection were questionnaires and interview schedules. The questionnaires were administered to the head teachers and support staff while the interviews were conducted to the support staff and Board of Management chairpersons. Content validity of the instruments was ascertained by experts from the School of Education, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology. A pilot study was carried out in 3 schools which were not part of the main study to establish the reliability of the instruments by using the outcome to remove the ambiguities, inconsistencies and weaknesses noted. Quantitative data from closed-ended questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages and means. Qualitative data from open-ended sections of the questionnaires and interviews were analyzed by organizing the content into themes and sub themes as they emerged, then tallied and presented through verbatim reporting. The study revealed that conditions of work influence work performance of support staff. The study also found that support staff in Rarieda Sub-County work under poor conditions. They experienced challenges such as inadequate working tools, low salary, inadequate housing and are overworked. In coping with the challenges faced, support staff carried tools from home, engaged in small scale businesses and odd jobs, commuted from their homes and others who are unable to cope persevered. The study recommended that: Ministry of Education should improve support staff working conditions by taking up full payment of support staff salaries, increasing support staff salaries, putting up houses for support staff, recruiting more support staff and increasing FSE funds to enable schools acquire enough working tools. The study may be useful to the policy makers in realizing how work conditions influence performance of support staff; head teachers to discover successful strategies of improving work conditions of support staff; and in providing baseline information for further research in conditions of work of support staff.