Managerial Practices and Skills of Public Elementary School Principals of Balayan East and West Districts in Relation to The Pupils' Academic Performance

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

For decades, principals have been recognized as important contributors to the effectiveness of schools. In an era of shared decision-making and management in schools and leadership matters, principals constitute the core of the leadership team in schools. This study was conducted to determine the assessment of school heads and teachers regarding "Managerial Practices and Functions of School Principals of Balayan East and West Districts in Relation to the Pupils' Academic Performance" as measured by the National Achievement Test. The information gathered from this research would help the school managers and administrators to understand their performance of their managerial practices and management functions and decide what needs to be strengthened in order to motivate teachers to develop to advanced level of school academic performance.METHODSThis study used the descriptive analysis method to determine the performance of public elementary school principals in 14 public elementary schools in Balayan East District and 13 public elementary schools in Balayan West District in terms of their managerial practices and functions in relation to their teachers’ morale and the pupils' academic performance measured by the National Achievement Test.

RESULTS

The respondents rated all items under managerial practices as to leadership, work structure, record keeping/reports/ communication, plant and facilities management, staff development, classroom observation, instructional improvement, research and development, human public relations/community involvemen as “outstanding.” Under management functions as planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling, school heads were assessed very high by the respondents. The schools in Balayan East District showed very satisfactory performance with regard to National Achievement Test ranging from 79-96.75 mean possible scores with descriptive level of developing to advance, with the average means score of 91.54 and standard deviation of 5.65 showed that the performance of schools were in the advanced level. The schools in Balayan West District also performed well academically as to National Achievement Test is concerned. This was shown by the results of Achievement Test ranging from 79-96.75 which indicated developing to advanced level of academic performance with the average mean score of 87.02, and the standard deviation of 6.75 indicated good dispersion in the scores of the schools.The responses of the respondents, teachers, and school heads did not differ significantly. The computed t-value of 0.17 which was lesser to the t-tabular value of 2.06 with 25 degrees of freedom at 0.05 level of significance, this therefore signified that the hypothesis is accepted

DISCUSSIONS

Theresult of the study showed that the outstanding performances of the public elementary school principals and school heads contributed significantly to the pupils' academic performance measured by the National Achievement Test. All public elementary school principals and school heads are recommended to continue their outstanding performance in terms of their managerial practices and management functions.