Leadership style of school principals and perfomance of primary schools in Nairobi county of Kenya

Abstract

Education has been defined as the process through which knowledge; skills, attitudes and values are imparted for the purpose of integrating the individual in a given society, or changing the values and norms of a society. According to the government of Kenya, education begins at early childhood development which is the nursery, baby class among others. The leadership of the school is vested on the school principal. Leadership is influencing other people in order to achieve a given goal. The study sought to find out how the leadership style of the school principal affect the performance of the student in their Kenya Certificate Primary Education. The methodology of the study was use of both primary and secondary data, the primary data was meant to enable the researcher identify the leadership style of the school principal and the demographics of the school which included the ownership of the school, number of streams, gender of the principal among others. The secondary data was the performance of the sampled primary school in their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. The sampled schools were in Nairobi County and they were both private and public schools. The findings of the study show that a large number of primary schools in Nairobi County use the bureaucratic leadership styles, this mean that decisions are made as per the set rules and regulations. This is followed by participative, then authoritative and finally laissez –faire style. There is no clear association between the leadership style and the performance of the school. However, there is a clear connection between the number of student within a school and the performance of the student. It is critical to note that the number of students in the school is highest where the leadership style is bureaucratic. This could be associated with the fact that most parents believe that the principal who makes decision “by the book” is much effective. In conclusion, the type of leadership that is embraced in primary schools is transformational; this is where the school principal inspires the v staff to adopt the schools vision as their own. The leading leadership in the primary schools is bureaucratic. The level of delegation in school is encouraging as most of the schools have committees that include; sports committees, academic committee’s disciplinary committee among. This is encouraging as it shows that the staffs are involved in the management of the school. The study recommends that the number of students within a school should be monitored to avoid high number of students in class, this is because, the teachers workload will be affected and the performance of the student will also be affected in a negative way. By having fewer students the teachers have an opportunity to give one on one attention to the student, identify their weakness, their strength and help them improve before they undertake their final exam. The study further recommends that there are other factors that need to be considered when improving the performance of the school, they include, resource such as books, enough teachers among others. The study further recommends continuous training for the school principals to enable them deal with the changes within the school.