Influence of Religious Sponsorship on Academic Performance of Secondary Schools in Kenya: A Comparative Study between Protestant and Catholic Sponsored Secondary Schools in Trans-Nzoia County, Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of church sponsorship on academic performance of schools. The study was guided by the following research objective: to establish the influence of provision of teaching/learning resources on academic performance among Catholic and Protestant church sponsored secondary schools in Trans Nzoia County. The study was guided by the systems theory and structural functional theory. The study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive survey research design under a mixed research design paradigm. The target population for the study were 192 secondary schools in Trans Nzoia County. The sampling units were 92 religious sponsored public schools and stratified sampling was used to select a sample of 45 school heads from catholic and protestant sponsored schools. Questionnaires were used in data collection. Document analysis was used to extract school means as a measure of performance. Before carrying out analysis, normality tests were performed. Some data showed skewness and hence both parametric and non-parametric tests were used. The Null hypothesis was that data followed the normal distribution. Since all the p-values were significant, the Null hypothesis was rejected except for performance. Both descriptive and inferential data analysis techniques were used. Descriptive statistics involved use of frequencies, means (standard deviation) and percentages while inferential statistics involved use of chi-square spearman's rho correlation to test the research null hypotheses and t-test to compare mean responses between Catholic and Protestant sponsored secondary schools. Results were presented in tables, charts and graphs. The findings of the study indicate that there was no significant relationship between provision of teaching learning resources and students' academic performance in KCSE (Rho=0.170, p= 0.264) among religious sponsored schools. Sponsor churches' contributions towards course books, revision materials and writing materials were to a less extent. Less than one third of the schools reported being assisted by their church sponsor to construct classrooms, libraries and laboratories. The Ministry of education needs to review, regulate and supervise the policy on sponsorship of public secondary schools. This will ensure church sponsor activities to schools that have positive and significant effect on KCSE performance.