Influence of Parental Engagement on Effective Implementation of Competency-Based Education in Public Comprehensive Schools in Migori County, Kenya

Effective implementation of Competency-Based Education depends substantially on the depth and consistency of parental engagement in the home-learning environment. This study examined the influence of parental engagement on effective implementation of Competency-Based Education in public Comprehensive Schools in Migori County, Kenya. The study adopted a convergent mixed methods approach, integrating a cross-sectional survey design for the quantitative component and phenomenology design for the qualitative component. The target population comprised 5,643 class representative parents across 627 public Comprehensive Schools and 8 Ministry of Education officials in the across the eight sub counties. Using proportionate stratified sampling and systematic sampling procedure, 81 parents were sampled from 63 schools. Data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires supplemented by key informant interviews with eight Ministry of Education officials. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and simple linear regression in IBM SPSS Version 29, while qualitative data underwent thematic analysis. The study established that parental engagement had a moderate-to-strong statistically significant positive influence on effective CBE implementation, recording r = 0.564, R² = 0.318, F(1, 79) = 36.879, p < .001, and a standardized regression coefficient of β = 0.654. Key informant interviews confirmed that parental engagement in Migori County remains predominantly material rather than pedagogical, with poverty, attitudinal resistance to criterion-referenced assessment and household caregiving structures constraining the depth of home-based co-education. The study concludes that parental engagement is constructive in disposition but structurally constrained in depth, and recommends localized, multilingual and economically accessible parental engagement frameworks coordinated jointly by schools and the Ministry of Education. Keywords: Parental Engagement; Competency-Based Education; CBE Implementation; Home-Based Learning Support; Public Comprehensive Schools; Decision-Making Participation