Improving academic performance through teacher motivational strategies in nakuru north sub county

Recently, motivation strategies have been used to encourage teachers to teach with an aim of improving their students’ performance in schools. The teacher motivational strategies will be evaluated to check if they impact on learning outcomes among selected schools in Nakuru North Sub County. The question to be answered in the article will be; what are the teacher motivational strategies employed in public secondary schools; and what are their impact on students’ learning outcomes as reflected in students performance in national examinations. The target sample was drawn from 18 public secondary schools that have participated in the KCSE for the last 3 years. The study sampled 132 respondents in total comprising eighteen principals and 114 teachers. The study adopted an Ex-post facto design and stratified random sampling technique in the identification and selection of the study sample. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the selected teachers and the 18 principals of the selected schools. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to aid in the processing and analysis of the collected data. Statistical tools used for data manipulation are standard deviation, correlation coefficient and simple linear regression. The data was presented in form of tables, bar graphs and pie-charts. Teachers motivating strategies were found to have influenced students’ performance in a positive way in the last three years in the study area. Monetary rewards were identified as an excellent way of rewarding teachers for the good work. Other strategies identified are; giving job security, good salaries equivalent to the job done, freedom to select learning materials, among others mentioned earlier. Therefore, for students to perform well teacher motivation strategies should not be ignored and all efforts need to be put by stakeholders to motivate teachers.