Principals’ Leadership Practices and Students’ Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Kisumu County, Kenya

Abstract

This study set out to examine how principals’ leadership practices impact the academic outcomes of public secondary schools in Kisumu County, Kenya. The aim was to explore how these leadership behaviors can be leveraged as tools for enhancing school performance. The motivation for the study stemmed from persistently low academic results in the county's public secondary schools. Between 2017 and 2021, only 26.9% of students attained a minimum grade of C+, while the county’s average mean score stood at 4.23 falling short of the university entry threshold of 7.0. The research focused on four core objectives: assessing the impact of setting direction, enhancing teacher development, fostering collaborative cultures, and strengthening academic programmes on student performance. Rooted in the Transformational Leadership Theory, the study employed a cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from a sample comprising 152 principals, 428 teachers, and 404 students, all drawn from 152 public secondary schools through stratified random, simple random, and purposive sampling methods. The broader population included 204 principals, 2,196 teachers, and 14,973 students from 204 schools in the county. The instruments for data collection included questionnaires, interviews, observations, and document analysis. Data analysis involved both simple and multiple regression, using dummy variables within categorical regression frameworks, and findings were presented using descriptive text and tabulated summaries. Results revealed that three leadership dimensions—setting direction [F (2,149) = 6.306, p = .012, R² adj. = .035], teacher development [F (2,149) = 4.027, p = .020, R² adj. = .039], and fostering collaboration [F (2,149) = 2.232, p = .009, R² adj. = .024]—were significantly associated with academic performance. However, equipping academic programmes showed no significant effect [F (2,149) = .063, p = .936]. When considered collectively, the overall model was statistically significant [F (8,143) = 2.565, p = .041, R² adj. = .040]. Notably, only the development of teaching staff remained a significant individual predictor in the final model [DTS-G (143) = 2.026, p = .034]. From these results—three significant variables against one non-significant, and a significant overall model—the study concluded that the leadership behaviors of principals do indeed play a meaningful role in determining school performance outcomes in Kisumu County. A key output of the research was the formulation of predictive models linking specific leadership practices to school performance: P1 = 5.062 + .334SDR-G + ε; P1 = 4.877 + .539DTS-G + ε; P1 = 5.008 + 0.4BCC-G + ε; and a composite model, P1 = 4.945 + 0.513DTS-G + the study recommends that the Ministry of Education ensures each school has an operational strategic plan and that principals apply leadership strategies that provide clear direction. It also advises that principals be supported with adequate resources to design school-specific development initiatives for staff and students. Moreover, it proposes that the Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI) include units on collaborative leadership and innovation in its training curriculum. Finally, it calls for equitable distribution of learning resources across all school categories—national, extra-county, county, and sub-county. The study also suggests future research using quasi-experimental designs to more precisely determine the effects of principal leadership and its components on student academic success.