Influence of principals' leadership styles on Students' academic performance in public Secondary schools in Njoro district, Nakuru County

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of principals' leadership styles on students' academic performance The study was guided by the following specific objective was to: identify the leadership styles used by Principals in public secondary schools in Njoro District, determine the influence of Principals' leadership on the managements of schools, establish the influence of Principals' leadership on teachers' job satisfaction in secondary schools and identify the influence of Principals' leadership on the performance of students. This study used descriptive survey design. The District has 30 public secondary schools. The study targeted school principals, teachers, students and the subordinate staff in the schools. A total of 20 public secondary schools were randomly sampled for the study. Purposive sampling was used to select the school principals, while simple random sampling technique was used to sample teachers, subordinate staff and students. A total of 380 respondents were targeted by the study (constituting 20 principals, 80 teachers, 40 subordinate staff and 240 students) out of which 372 responded (20 principals, 78 teachers, 34 subordinate staff and 240 students) giving a response rate of 98%. In sampling of the students, 12 students were sampled from form three classes in the schools selected. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as instruments for data collection. Quantitative data collected was analyzed, presented and interpreted using both descriptive statistics while content analysis technique was used to analyze qualitative data collected using interview schedules. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) package was used to analyze the quantitative data. Descriptive statistics including means, frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the data. Correlation and regression analysis was done to test on the relationship between the study variables. The analyzed data were presented in form of tables, pie-charts and bar-graphs where applicable. Regard the leadership styles, the study found that 58 (74%) of the respondents indicated that participative leadership was used in their schools. Most of the principals in secondary schools in Njoro District used mixed leadership styles even though the dominant leadership style is participative. Principal's leadership style was found to affect the management of schools in Njoro District as indicated by 76 (97%). Other ways by which the school leadership influences the management of schools included influence of leadership style on the staff morale which affects the school management and its affects on decision making which affects service delivery among the teaching and non teaching staff. On the influence of Principals' leadership style on teachers' job satisfaction, the study found that 74 (75%) indicated that it affects job satisfaction among the teaching and non teaching staff. Finally, on the influence of principals' leadership style on students' performance, the study found that 68 (85%) of the respondents indicated that leadership style influences student performance. The findings from the correlation and regression analysis and Chi-square tests showed that principals' leadership style influenced the management of the school, job satisfaction among the staff and students' performance. The study concluded that principals' leadership style influences school management, job satisfaction among the staff and students performance, The study recommends that principals in secondary schools in Njoro should use mixed leadership styles. The study finally recommended that another study be done on the challenges facing the management secondary schools in other districts which was not the focus of this study.