| dc.description.abstract | This paper describes a study on the utilization of School Information Systems (SIS) in secondary schools in Kenya. It begins by describing the structure of the Education system in Kenya, ICT in educational management and administration and similar studies done in Uganda, Botswana, Japan, United Arab Emirates and in Hong Kong. The growing importance of SIS and other technological innovations has become a major catalyst for change in secondary schools operations and processes in Kenya. SIS are expensive investments with significant amount of organizational changes, and that is why the issue of evaluation and assessment of SIS use is important. The purpose of this study was to establish and document factors that influence the use of SIS in Kenya secondary schools. Additionally the study looked at types of SIS used in Kenya, the extent of use, the effects of use and the user's opinion on the quality of SIS used in Kenya. The study used the Visscher Model developed by Dr. Adrien Visscher. The study was a cross sectional descriptive survey using quantitative approach to data collection, analysis and reporting. Two questionnaires were designed and developed to collect data from several personnel in 28 secondary schools spread across the following provinces of Kenya i.e. Nairobi,Western,Nyanza and Central. The data collected was studied and analyzed using the SPSS software tool and the findings confirmed that there are various factors that influence both direct and indirect use of SIS. These factors were found to be training on the use of SIS, support from SIS administrators and Length of use of SIS. Correlation analysis was done on various aspects of quality of the SIS i.e. speed of retrieving information on screen and speed of printing out information and it was revealed that they did not affect the use of SIS, therefore the study came up with a new validated Visscher model for the Kenyan context. The results of the study also revealed that the SIS was mainly used for clerical purposes while managerial use by school managers is very limited. It was also revealed that there are several obstacles that hinder the use of SIS, and these were documented as lack of training, poor quality SIS and lack of support from both SIS administrators and school administrators. The amount of training was found to be the most important factor that encouraged the use of the SIS. Thus it is crucial that during the design and implementation of SIS, we consider increasing the amount of training for the intended SIS users and hiring the services of a system administrator. The training offered can be both from external sources or internal sources. The other factor that proved crucial in affecting the use of SIS was ease of getting help either from within the school or outside the school. The study also revealed that support from system administrators is a key factor that determines the use of SIS in Kenya's Secondary schools The other factor was the quality and quantity of training was also very crucial in affecting the utilization of SIS. The study concluded that users were generally positive on the effects of SIS and that better use would be promoted if training was provided to the user at the implementation stage | en_US |
