Strategies of enhancement of public private partnership and performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training institutions in South Rift Region, Kenya

Abstract

Technical Vocational Educational Training (TVET) sector remains a cornerstone for social-economy development and a driver for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, promoting the performance of TVET institutions through their partnership with industry to form learning partnerships is inevitable. In spite of this, companies across sectors are struggling to find suitable candidates for job vacancies because the TVET courses offered at various training institutions often do not meet the requirements of the private sector. However, there are limited studies in the Kenyan context focusing on the impact of public private partnership practices on the performance of TVET institutions. In this regard the current study has been designed to investigate the impact of strategies of enhancement of public private partnership on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions in South Rift Region, Kenya. In this regard, the specific objectives of the study were to; find out the impact of partnership in infrastructure provision on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions , assess the impact of partnership in curriculum development on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions, analyse the impact of partnership in financing on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions, determine the impact of partnership in training on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions and assess the impact of partnership in staff development on performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions in South Rift Region, Kenya. This study relied on resource-based view and stake holders’ theory. In a bid to effectively achieve this, the study adopted an Explanatory Sequential research design based on samples drawn from across the TVET institutions in South Rift Region which have public private partnership in their respective institutions. The target population was 470 trainers who included trainers of mechanical engineering departments, electrical engineering departments, building departments, management representative of TVET institutions in South rift region. Cluster, stratified random and sampling simple random technique was used. A sample size of 214 was drawn from a total population of 470 trainers. Data was collected by use of interview schedules and questionnaires from the respondents and analysed by use of both inferential statistics e.g., multiple regression, spearman’s correlation and descriptive statistics e.g., frequencies, standard deviation, means using SPSS version 25. From the findings, all the four predictors (Infrastructure, Curriculum development, Practical training and Staff development) jointly explained 72.4 per cent variation on Performance of public Technical Vocational Education and Training Institutions From the regression coefficient β values for Infrastructure (0.206), Curriculum development (0.268), Practical training (0.151) and Staff development (0.178) were positive. The positive β values indicate the direction of relationship between predictors and outcome. In the qualitative analysis of interviews, the findings showed that the public TVET institutions adopted private public partnership to ensure performance of public TVET institutions. The study therefore concludes that all the PPPs approaches under study positively and significantly affect performance of public TVET institutions. The study therefore recommends Therefore, there is need for strengthening private public partnership approaches to improve the performance of public TVET institutions.