Family Attachment and the Job Satisfaction of Delocalized Head Teachers in Bumula Sub County, Kenya

: Delocalisation of teachers in Kenya came into effect in 2018 when long serving head teachers and headteachers, and later deputy head teachers and deputy headteachers were transferred to stations outside their home counties. These involuntary transfers were followed by numerous turnover intentions and some teachers actually quit the profession because of reasons the employer failed to listen to, such as age, health conditions and family attachment. The purpose of this study was to establish the effect of family attachment on the job satisfaction of the delocalised head teachers’. Descriptive survey research design was used. The study targeted all the delocalised head teachers in public primary schools in Bumula Sub County. Census sampling was employed to select the 41 delocalised head teachers who were the main respondents. A questionnaire was used as a method of data collection. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics in the form of frequency counts, percentages and presented in tables. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation was computed. Chi-square statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to ascertain between the independent and dependent variables. It was discovered that family attachment had a significant association with the job satisfaction of the delocalised headteacher’s.


Introduction
The TSC Annual report, (2019) reports that for female teachers, working in one place rather than relocating to another becomes a preference especially due to family constraints.If such teachers are transferred their performance gets adversely affected in the new school at least during the initial period.
Shikokoti, Okoth and Chepkonga (2021) carried out a study about how delocalisation policy influences job satisfaction among teachers in public Secondary Schools in Kakamega County, Kenya.By applying the expectancy theory, the study findings showed that principal's attachment with family affects his job (β= -.126, p =.071).Whereas the expectancy theory explains what motivates behaviour in individual and the efforts they need to put in to get the

Suggested Citation
Sikuku, P., Barasa, J. & Likoko, S. (2023).Family Attachment and the Job Satisfaction of Delocalized Head Teachers in Bumula Sub County, Kenya.European Journal of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, 1(5), 654-659.DOI: 10.59324/ejtas.2023.1(5).54desired result, the current study will employ the job embeddedness theory which outlines why people are resistant to move from one location to another location and would rather stick to one station.Gomba (2016), while investigating factors that made teachers to remain in the teaching profession discovered that the teachers were fond of their families that they could not leave for they feared that no one would look after their family.With respect to women, their husbands influenced them to stay.The participants, 6 in number all cited family issues as the major reason for them to remain in the teaching field for more than ten years.The current study wishes to evaluate the influence of delocalised head teachers' family attachment on job satisfaction which the above study did not manage to establish.
Jelagat and Edabu (2020) in their study found distance from family as a major reason for voluntary teacher transfer in Uganda.Respondents highlighted that transferring a teacher away from his/her family retards family development, promotes sexual immorality, domestic violence and retards teachers' performance in schools.Much literature suggest that majority of teachers have desire to work near home (Nassali Lukwago, 2000) as cited by (Komakech, 2017;Muyingo, 2010;Noor et al., 2012).Komakech (2017) and Noor et al. (2012) observed that when teachers are moved away from their families or their area of residence they face challenges of distance, transport issue, socio cultural issue and delay in delivery of salary from his/her new work stations.Mulkeen and Chen (2008) adds that teachers are reluctant to relocate to an area where the first language is different from their own.This significantly affects teachers' social lives in terms of relationship with family, commitment to work, and adjustment to new working area /culture.Erdamar (2009) examined the relationship between job satisfaction and family ties of Turkish primary school teachers and found out that the family ties of teachers were above the average.It was also found that the more children individuals have, the more difficulty they experience in economic terms and in family ties.This situation is thought to decrease job satisfaction level.However, this study did not consider the distance of separation between the teacher and his family, and its influence on job satisfaction, a gap which this study seeks to fill Kyara (2013) examined how job satisfaction affects teachers' performance in primary schools in Tanzania.The study was guided by a conceptual framework for which variables such as inputs, environmental process and output were analysed.The results of the study indicated that teachers' school attendance was negatively affected by the distance from their homes.The study however did not consider the teachers who had been geographically separated from their families and thus this is gap the current study intends to fill.
Othuon and Ariko (2012) in their study whose purpose was to investigate how teacher transfer requests can be minimized employed a descriptive survey design.The study revealed that teacher transfer requests could be reduced if transport and communication to schools was improved; electricity and houses were made available to teachers; teachers employed from the locality and posted next to their families.The researchers only used descriptive statistics to explain the outcome.This is a gap the current study intends to fill by using inferential statistics Purposive sampling was used to select 4 PDTTCs, 4 college principals and 8 senior masters.Simple random sampling was used to select 430 academic staff members for the study.Data was collected using a questionnaire which had closed-ended (likert type scale 1-5) questions.Items from the main questionnaire were arranged and grouped according into specific research objectives.College principals and senior masters were interviewed in order to get in-depth information on academic staff retention.The data was analyzed using statistical tools such as logistic regression, Pearson correlation, simple linear regression analysis and multiple regression analysis.The study therefore, concluded that more satisfied academic staff would have little intention to leave.However, the current study focused on delocalised school heads to fill the gap.

Research Design
A descriptive survey research design was used.A descriptive design involves asking a large group of respondents' questions about a particular issue (Mugenda & Mugenda, 2003).This design is advantageous because it helps the researcher to obtain information that describes phenomenon by gathering information directly from the respondents about the factor which lead to their job satisfaction/dissatisfaction.Also, it is easy to apply a questionnaire which allow for the collection of data from a large number of respondents in a relatively short period of time with minimum cost.

The Study Area
The study will be carried out in Bumula Sub County.

Study Population
The study targeted all the delocalized head teachers in public primary schools in Bumula Sub County.

Sampling Procedure and Sample Size
Purposive sampling was used to select the respondents.

Family Attachment on the Delocalised Headteachers' Job Satisfaction
The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of family attachment on the delocalised Headteacher's job satisfaction.The Headteachers were requested to fill questionnaire and various sentiments on family attachment was put on likert scale ranging from 1 -5.In this study the score of 1 was assigned to strongly disagree and 5 to strongly agree.Date from the findings are presented in Table 2.
The respondents also agreed Job demands disturbed their personal life with their family.

Correlation between Family Attachment and the Delocalized Headteacher's Job Satisfaction
In order to establish the relationship between Family attachment and the delocalised principal's job satisfaction, Pearson correlation analysis was used to find out if there existed a relationship.A correlation is a number between -1 and +1 that measures the degree of relationship between two variables.The correlation coefficient value (r) that ranges from 0.10 to 0.29 would be considered weak, from 0.30 to 0.49 would be considered medium and from 0.50 to 1.0 would be considered strong.Therefore, a positive value for the correlation would imply a positive relationship and a negative value for the correlation would imply an inverse or negative association.The study findings are shown on Table 3.The Pearson correlation index obtained on the first variable ".My job makes it difficult for me to find time to be with my family "was r= 0.468, it is moderate positive correlation with ρ<0.0001 which is less than alpha = 0.05 which means that the Headteachers job makes it difficult for them to find time to be with their families.
The correlation between the fourth variable "The distance between my family and school makes me feel uncomfortable." and job satisfaction was not statistically significant ((r =-0.142, ρ=0.253) at α= 0.05)).Likewise, the correlation between the sixth "I always find time to meet my family physically" and job satisfaction was not statistically significant ((r =204, ρ=0.654) at α= 0.05)).These variables were not significant in the study.

Conclusion
Based on the findings of the study, family attachment has a significant influence on job satisfaction of the delocalised headteachers.The researcher therefore concluded that there was a lower satisfaction among the delocalised head of schools based on family ties.
Likoko, Mutsotso & Ndiku (2018) evaluated the effects of academic staff job satisfaction on retention in Public Diploma Teacher Training Colleges in Kenya.The study employed ex post facto research design to test the statistical relationships between job satisfaction and academic staff retention in PDTTCs in Kenya.