Influence Of Head Teachers’ Leadership Styles On Pupils’ Academic Performance In Primary Schools In Yatta District, Machakos County, Kenya

Abstract

Students’ academic achievement is very crucial at every level, individual, family, organization and the nation as a whole. For a school to perform well, in academic and co-curricular activities, effective leadership is needed. Cole (2002). The government of Kenya continues to provide teaching staff to all public primary schools in the country, to provide instructional materials through Free Primary Education programme, physical facilities in the schools so that all pupils perform well in national examinations. The study sought to investigate the influence of the head teacher’s leadership styles on the academic performance of public primary school pupils in Yatta District. The study used expost facto research design. The researcher collected data using two sets of questionnaires with both open and closed ended items, for head teachers and teachers. Both types of questionnaires had three sections, where section A collected demographic data, section B collected performance data while section C collected data on perceptions of head teachers leadership styles. To determine reliability of instruments, test-retest technique was used and using Pearson product moment correlation formular, a correlation co-efficient of 0.8 for both instruments was obtained.This study was based on the contingency theory of leadership brought up by Fredick Fielder (1967). In this study expost facto design was employed. The target population of this study was all the public primary schools in Yatta District, Machakos County. There are 124 primary schools, three public primary school have not yet presented candidates for KCPE so was not be used in this study, therefore 121 head teachers formed part of the target population. Quantitative data analysis and descriptive statistics was used to give percentages, frequencies and means for the different leadership styles. The data presented helped to explain the relationships between the variables of the study. The findings revealed that majority of the teachers (62%) perceived their head teachers leadership styles as autocratic while majority of the head teachers themselves (60%) perceived their leadership style as democratic. In schools where democratic style was exhibited, academic performance was higher than schools where autocratic styles was used, while where laissez style was used poor results were a characteristic. The study further concludes that head teachers are friendly and easy to approach and talk to, that head teachers normally listen to each group of school community even when they hold different opinion from mine, that head teachers normally encourage staff to frankly express their view points, that head teachers always express confidence in staff even when we disagree on some issues. The researcher therefore concludes that head teachers leadership styles influence academic performance in primary schools in Yatta District. The head teachers mainly used autocratic leadership styles. The study recommends that Kenya Education Management Institute support head teachers by providing frequent training programs and appointment to headship by the Teacher Service Commission should be based on academic and professional competence. The study finally gives suggestions for further study