Abstract:
The study was about the influence of the school environment on the teacher’s self-esteem in public primary schools in Uasin Gishu County. Most school environments after the introduction of the Free Primary Education in Kenya in 2003 are characterized by high pupil-teacher ratio, over populated classrooms and limited resources. Incidences of low morale, stress, workload pressure have also been noted amongst some teachers in some public primary schools. This study determined the status of physical infrastructure, social welfare relations, work satisfaction and self-esteem levels of teachers in public primary schools in Eldoret East Sub County. The socioecological theory of Bronfenbrenner (1997) which gives the perspective of the school environment and fourth step of Maslow’s theory which is self-esteem were deemed appropriate for the study. The study employed a descriptive survey design. The target population was 1416 teachers from which 305 teachers were sampled to take part in the study. Stratified random sampling and simple random sampling with optimum allocation technique was used to ensure a fair distribution of the sample size. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire and an observation checklist. To measure self-esteem, a Rosenberg 4-point Likert scale was used. Collected data was cleaned, coded and analysed using (SPSS 23). The findings of this study indicated that the status of the physical infrastructure in schools under study were wanting. Of the respondents, 55.8% reported that classrooms are overcrowded, 59% reported that desks, chairs and lockers for both teachers and pupils were not in good condition and in 72.9% of the schools sampled, it was reported that textbooks were not enough. On social welfare, over 90% of the respondents indicated that interpersonal relationships are an important learning and teaching component. Furthermore, 90% of the respondents believe that a conducive work environment brings about excellent work. On measuring the teachers’ self-esteem on the Rosenberg global self-esteem, the findings revealed that 50% of the respondents scored between 12-16 points implying teachers have an average self-esteem which is influenced by the school environment. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the government and other education stakeholders should invest in the improvement of the school environment of public primary schools to boost teachers’ self-esteem
