Impact of principals' leadership styles on kcse performance in public secondary schools in Tana River County (Kenya)

Abstract

In the country, Kenya, many teachers have been elevated to leadership positions without formal training thus leading to mismanagement of schools, poor students' performance and disappointing results. The kind of leadership style adopted by a leader greatly determines the nature of performance in an institution. All around are many examples of schools whose once glorious reputations have been brought low through inadequacies in leadership and others greatly improved through effective leadership. Whereas good leadership initiates and sustains a slow but steady upward spiral, bad leadership makes academic standards plummet. Centrally the study was to examine the impact of principals' leadership style on KCSE performance in public secondary schools in the vast Tana River District. The samples included teachers and principals from the nine selected public schools in the district. Random sampling was employed to come up with the sample. Data was collected using questionnaires for teachers and principals. The Principals filled the profile of own behavior (form OB) and the teachers filled profile of leader behaviour (form LB). Both inferential and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data collected. Precisely frequencies, simple percentages and measures of central tendency were used to analyze the data. Graphs and tables were used to present data. Correlation analysis was used to show the relationship between principals' leadership styles and student performance in K.C.S.E. Findings largely indicated that principals' leadership styles greatly affects students' KCSE performance. The autocratic leadership style dominant in Tana River County secondary schools has been found to have a significant positive correlation with the very poor grades being posted by the students at K.C.S.E. It is therefore recommended that principals need to shift to transformative approaches of leadership for effectiveness so as to improve the poor performance of their students at K.C.S.E. To this end, it is recommended that a one year mandatory leadership training programme be initiated during the holidays for the principals in Tana River County to update them with modern leadership trends and techniques. It also recommended that a reputation of fairness and equity should be fostered by the principals to the teachers as this would motivate a spirit of loyalty and love in them leading to high productivity and improved performance in particular. xi