Abstract:
Abstract: Strategic planning in educational institutions, just like in many successful organizations in the world today
has become a very crucial tool that is used to improve performance based management to ensure survival and competitive
advantage, and presently, educational institutions too have embraced strategic planning to improve performance
management practices. In the process of using strategic planning as a tool for improving performance, strategy control
and evaluation is very important to ensure effective implementation and to gauge if progresses made towards the
achievements of strategic goals and objectives are on track. This purpose of this study was to examine if the Principals
had employed effective control measures and evaluated the progresses made on strategy designs and structures initiated to
improve performance management practices in public secondary schools in Nyamira County, Kenya. The study used
descriptive survey design with a total of 225 subjects. Stratified sampling was used to group the subjects while simple
random sampling was used to select the participants from each stratum. Purposive sampling was used to select the
Principals and Deputies while Slovin formula was used to select the HODs. Questionnaires were used for collecting data
from the Principals, Deputy Principals and HODs,. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 22.0 was used to
analyze quantitative data. The findings of the study revealed that most of the Principals did not employ effective strategic
plan control and evaluation and this affected improvement in performance management practices. Lack of effective
control and evaluation of strategic designs and structures was therefore an impediment to the achievement of the desired
standards in performance practices. The study recommended that there is need for Principals to put appropriate
modalities in place to ensure there is effective control of strategy designs and decisions and enforce performance
measurements processes to gauge the levels of achievements made in relation to strategic planning.
Keywords: Influence, Strategic planning, Strategy control, evaluation, Improvement, Performance, Management,
Practices, Public secondary schools.
