Leadership Styles In School

Management Style

The head teachers’ role in school-based management is evident in the line of decision making. The leadership style of head teachers has huge bearing on teachers output, hence, students’ achievement. The role of the teacher as far as leadership is concern is important in developing students’ socio-moral life and since the child spends majority of the time with a teacher at school, the manner they handle children should be the concern of stakeholders. Hence, the leadership style of both the head teacher and teacher must be cordial in a manner that would boost the confidence of the child to learn, resulting to high school performance.

A study conducted by Nsubuga (2008) on analysis of leadership styles and school performance of

The study employed case-study design and used a qualitative approach. The study therefore stated that the SBM policy has engendered school improvement, in that the principal’s and stakeholders’ role have changed under SBM, whose primary role is to make decisions as to how money is being spent, who teaches what and the structure of the curriculum are all under the auspices of the principal and the school management committee. Botha (2006) stated that, though other factors contributed to the success of school improvement and SBM, central is the principal’s leadership role of connecting the necessary resources together to achieve the most desiring results. Van der Westhaizen (1997) cited in Botha, (2006: 342) stated that the school principal is described as the “key player in decentralisation and restructuring process”. Also, the principal’s leadership is observed as the ability “to convince, inspire, bind and direct followers to realise the common ideals”. The SBM system envisaged total restructuring of the educational reform by handing down maximum authority to principals to improve the school and student performance. With this, the principal is accountable to parents, students, community and the state in the use of

Several researchers have reported the effectiveness of SBM to improve schools and students’ academic achievement (Gamage and Bandur, 2014; Botha, 2006; ). The objective of instituting school-based management as a policy is to improve the quality of schools, and hence advocates entirely for the restructuring of school management and financing (De Grauwe, 2005). He explained that, teacher performance can only be realised when there is effectiveness of SBM practised in schools. Policies and programmes of SBM in several jurisdictions differ in their operations. Many developed countries who adapted the SBM policy have great autonomy at the school level whereby school management councils have the responsibility to recruit head teachers/ principals, teachers and other supporting staff. As such, school management committees and the community can directly hold teachers and head teachers accountable for students’ academic performance and school improvement (De Grauwe, 2004). Conversely, school level autonomy in developing countries is hardly realised. While curriculum development, salary disbursement, teacher and head teacher recruitment are centralised, school management and financing are decentralised. Countries like Ghana, Gambia, Madagascar, Niger, Rwanda and Senegal have a decentralised system of school financing where schools are paid grants directly which amount is being