Influence of principal’s leadership style on academic performance in public secondary schools in Imenti North Sub-County, Meru County, Kenya

Abstract

The current global upsurge towards the acquisition of quality education has created the impetus to search for the most appropriate leadership styles which school administrators/principals should adopt for effective and efficient implementation of national curriculum paving way for high educational output. The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of principal’s leadership styles on students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Imenti North Sub-county in Meru County, Kenya. This was occasioned by the fact that despite the government effort of improving students’ academic achievement and discipline through policies that promote studemts’ participation in school management and resolution of conflicts through guidance and counselling, most of the public secondary schools in Imenti North Sub County have experienced persistent students’ unrest and low academic performance. The study was anchored on the Fiedler contingency theory. The study employed descriptive survey research design. The study targeted 46 secondary school principals and 46 senior teachers. Census sampling method was used to select all the senior teachers from all the 46 secondary schools while 14 teachers were elected through simple random sampling. Data were collected through senior teachers’ questionnaire and principals’ interview schedule. Reliability of the questionnaire was determined through computation of chronbach alpha while content and face validity was ascertained through the two university supervisors scrutiny. Data were analysed through descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data was put into themes for anaysis. However, some qualitative data were quoted verbatim in order to maintain the power of the participants’ spoken words. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the three formulated hypotheses. The study found that principals’ use of democratic leadership style had the greatest significant influence on students’ KCSE mean score (β = 0.456, t(45) = 1.972, p < 0.05) followed by autocratic style (β = 0.308, t = 1.308, p < 0.05). However, leissez-faire leadership style impacted the studnets KCSE results negatively (β = -0.106, t (45) = -0.305, p = 0.717). The study recommended that principals need to be proactive and device ways of managing students’ emerging discipline and academic issues occasioned by the explosion of information technology.