The effect of pastoral care and mentorship programmes on psychosocial adjustment and academic performance of students in public secondary schools in Kakamega County, Kenya

Schools that are founded on Christian principles have chaplaincy services that are meant to mold students to develop as whole person physically, morally, spiritually, and mentally. Despite the fact that there are chaplaincy services in secondary schools in Kakamega County, indiscipline continues to affect many schools and hence, becoming a deterrent to effective learning. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effect of pastoral care and mentorship programs on the psychosocial adjustment and academic performance of students in public secondary schools in Kakamega County. The study was based on Structural Functionalism and Social Disintegration theories developed by Emile Durkheim that gave insight to the contributing factors for delinquency among students. Saturated sampling was used to select the two National secondary schools in Kakamega County, the County Quality Assurance and Standards Officer. Stratified random sampling was used to classify schools into Boys/ Girls, Boarding/ Day schools, mixed Day/ mixed boarding schools and mixed day schools. Purposive sampling was used to select the samples with the required information. Proportionate sampling was employed to select a sample size within the samples that would reflect the numerical strength of the samples selected and finally simple random sampling technique was used to accord each member a chance of being selected and each choice would be independent of any other choice. The target population for the study was 2888 teachers and 425 students. The study used Yamane method to arrive at a sample size of 395 teachers and 365 students. Correspondingly, pilot study was carried out and feedback obtained was used to correct research instruments that were afterwards used to collect data in the field. Data was collected through two validated questionnaires for teachers and students. Descriptive and inferential analysis was utilized to analyze data both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings revealed that pastoral care programmes develop sense of focus in life and set targets. The results further show that large proportion of the respondents 206 (57%) agreed that pastoral care programmes and mentorship build confidence, hope, faith and self-esteem in students. The findings of inferential statistics indicated that pastoral care and mentorship programme had a substantial impact on Psychosocial and Academic performance observed in public secondary schools in Kakamega County (t-statistic=15.072, p-value = 0.001< 0.05) there was no statistically significant effect of Pastoral care and mentorship programme on student psychosocial adjustment and academic performance in public secondary schools in Kakamega County. The study concluded that, the county should embrace continuous evaluation and improvement of counseling and chaplaincy programs to meet the needs of students in. The study recommends that there is a need to assess and revise the existing spiritual and moral counseling programs to ensure they effectively promote psychosocial adjustment among students. This can be done by incorporating evidence-based strategies and techniques that have been shown to have a positive impact on students' well-being and academics.