Principals’ Transformational Leadership Skills in Public Secondary Schools: A Case of Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions and Academic Achievement in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Due to reforms in the education sector, school managers need to appreciate the new policies and laws that guide school management, namely Children’s Act and Basic Education Act. Management of resources while ensuring accountability and integrity to the public is equally crucial. The reforms emanate from the Education changes brought about by the new constitution dispensation and the devolved system of Government. The managers of schools need to appreciate the new policies and laws that guide the management of schools such as: Education being a basic human right, therefore being free and compulsory and schools being disability friendly. There is also the element of participation which is important. Management of resources while ensuring accountability and Integrity to the public is equally crucial. Sessional Paper No 1 of 2005 emphasizes improving quality completion rates both at the primary and secondary school level of education (MOE: 2005). There have been reports about the literacy and academic achievement of students in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examination that point towards a decline in academic standards. With all these, the overall outlook of school managers has to change. This paper explores the way forward to a better understanding and management of schools in a new kind of leadership, transformational leadership, hence the need for this study. The study aimed to establish teachers’ and students’ perceptions on the Principals’ transformational leadership in Nairobi County, Kenya and correlate these to student academic achievement. Transformational leadership among the principals in Nairobi were examined and correlated with the study dependent variable, the student academic achievement. The two research objectives that guided the study were: (1) To find out the extent to which the principals in Nairobi County exhibit transformational leadership (2) To determine the correlation between the principals’ transformational leadership and student academic achievement. A mixed method approach was adopted by the study where both naturalistic and descriptive survey designs were used. Qualitative approach was utilized to gather more in- depth information from the principals and other respondents. A total of 21 eligible public secondary schools were drawn from a sampling frame of 73 schools through stratified sampling method. A total of ten teachers, ten students and the principal from each eligible school were sampled and included in the study. A total of 21 principals from each eligible school were included in the study. The total sample size was therefore four hundred and forty one (441) respondents drawn from the selected 21 public secondary schools. Questionnaires and interview guides were employed to collect data. Likert items with a 5-point response scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree were included in the questionnaire. The data was sorted out and analyzed by use of descriptive and inferential statistics. Correlations and T-test were used to examine how well the transformational leadership factors correlated with student achievement. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Microsoft's Excel and data presented using tables. The results of the study indicated that (i) there was a moderate, negative correlation between student perception towards principals’ transformational leadership and student achievement, which was statistically significant (ii) there was a strong, positive correlation between teacher perception towards principals’ transformational leadership and student achievement, which was statistically significant. The study recommends action plan by TSC in establishing training needs and training principals in transformational leadership.