Supportive Work Environment and Teacher Performance among Public Secondary School in Homa-Bay County, Kenya

Abstract

Supportive working environment is significant in enhancing employee satisfaction and, by far, worker retention and performance. Supervisor support, availability of conducive physical and learning resources, fair job demand are some of the factors in employment that affect job satisfaction and turnover intention. However, there has been rampant teacher transfer request in some parts of Kenya hence questioning whether this is due to lack of supportive work environment. During 2016-2020, high rates of transfer requests among public secondary schools in Nyanza Region were noticed in Homa Bay County (11860). This was in contrast to low requests noted in Kisumu (512), Siaya (647) or Migori (781). Similarly, performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination (KCSE) of the County has also been dropping by an average annual mean of 0.142 during the same period. This study therefore sought to investigate the influence of supportive work environment on performance of teachers among public secondary schools in Homa Bay County. Specific objectives were to determine the level of teacher performance, and to establish the influence of supportive work environment on performance of teachers. Descriptive research design was adopted on a target population of 257 public secondary schools comprising of 257 Principals and 2, 231 teachers. Yamane's formula was used to calculate 157 schools from which 157 principals and 314 teacher were drawn using stratified random sampling. Questionnaire and interview schedule were used to collect data from teachers and principals respectively. Findings showed that existing WLB situation favoured teacher performance (M=3.68; SD=0.923), although supportive work environment put in place by the administration explains only 28.3% variation in teachers; performance (R²=0.283).It is concluded existing support by school administration fall short of addressing issues such as workload hence does not induce teacher performance to the maximum. .