Impact Of Church Sponsorship On The Management Of Secondary Schools In Thika West And Gatundu North Districts In Kiambu County

This research attempted to study and investigate the impact of church sponsorship on the management of secondary schools in the larger Thika District covering the current Thika West, and Gatundu North Districts. The study examined historical foundation of Western Education in the said region and the factors that influenced the development, the role of missionaries in relation to organization, management of schools, financial and physical support and the nature of mission-state partnership in the provision of education. This study identified schools using purposive sampling techniques basing itself on the categories of national, provincial and district schools. It also categorized them on the basis of church sponsors which were Catholic Church, Anglican Church of Kenya, Presbyterian Church of East Africa and Salvation Army. 18 (51%) schools were sampled from which, the BoG chairpersons (18), principals (18), and 3 teachers per school (54) were selected to fill in the questionnaires. The District Education Officers of the two districts and the church representatives were interviewed, thus, 96 respondents. Data were collected using questionnaires and interviews. Researcher adopted descriptive survey research design. This is the process of collecting data to answer questions concerning the current status of church sponsors. The descriptive survey research design determines and reports the way things are and further attempts to describe people‟s attitudes, opinions, possible behaviour values and characteristics. Before the actual data collection, pilot study was randomly done on 3 schools to determine the reliability and validity of the instruments. It was discovered that two questions on the BoGs questionnaire were vague, adjustments were made on the questionnaires.