Leadership Competence of School Heads of Senior High Schools in Sdo-Quirino: Basis for Improvement in School Governance

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Leadership plays an indispensable role in the effectiveness of an educational institution, right from the setting of goals to the accomplishment of goals. Various researchers have linked the school effectiveness with leadership. In the absence of a leadership goal accomplishment, school effectiveness is never guaranteed. In the view of Cheng and Townsend (2000) for education change and effectiveness, the role of the principal is often crucial to their success. The school head is challenged to create the culture of quality that penetrates even the smallest elements, processes, and the system in the institution. It is a common experience that under the same set of rules and regulations, with the same set of teaching staff and students from a similar background, an educational institution degenerates or maintains status quo, or rises to prominences. This is also borne out by a large number of research studies on the management of change in education. Mukhaopadhyay (2001).

METHODS

The research used a descriptive type of research. It described the perception of the respondents along with leadership practices of the School Heads of the Senior High School implementers. It used descriptive methods because it involved the collection of data to answer questions on the status of the respondents under the study.

RESULTS

Results of the study show that as per the assessment of respondents to the leadership practices of School Heads, all of the items in each component was perceived as moderately engaged with challenging the process as the least gaining the mean with 2.35 and inspiring a shared vision being the highest among the five with 3.21. The rest of the other components Modeling the Way, enabling others to act, encouraging the heart gained a mean of 2.87, 2.90 and 3.05 respectively.

DISCUSSIONS

Education in all countries of the world has been considered very important for personal and societal development. It is in view of the indispensable role of education in the development of man and modern society that various declarations on education have been made at the global level and in our country in particular. Considering the governments' huge investment in public education, its output in terms of quality of students, observable decline in students' performance, attitude and values have been at variance with government expenditure. It appears as if this unpleasant situation is not a reflection of the instructional quality in the schools.