Leadership practices in selected successful schools.

Abstract

The study sought to explore leadership practices in three successful schools each from rural, township and urban areas. Nine school managers reported their day-to-day leadership practices they believed enhanced their schools’ success in terms of consistent outstanding matriculation results. In the study I used three data generation methods: semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis. The main research focus was to study what made these schools successful. The sub-areas of focus included the following: management practices, teaching practices, managing challenges, leadership styles, leadership skills and the school- community relationships. The findings revealed various ways in which success was achieved regardless of the schools significant differences in terms of socio-economic backgrounds. The most common leadership practices that brought successes in these three schools were the following: daily extra classes including weekends and public holidays; having visionary leadership that worked toward a common goals; having the right and committed staff who worked extra miles without expecting extra payment, ensuring quality tests, team leadership behaviours; effective planning and monitoring strategies to ensure curriculum coverage; having turnover strategies in place and using a mixture of tactical, strategic and democratic skills such as communication skills, performance management skills, analysis and judgment skills, coaching skills, empowerment skills; leading through vision and value; building trust; facilitating learning; building partnership; ability to lead participative meetings; listening skills; ability to handle conflict; group-centered decisionmaking skills, and team-building skills. However, the study showed that in all the schools leaders did not only use one leadership style, but a combination of these such as team leadership, transformational leadership, African leadership, reflective leadership, relational leadership and dictator leadership(sometimes) as well. I recommend that motivational workshops and seminars for both teacher and SMT; acknowledgements and reward system for well performing schools, and educating the community about their role in education could be useful strategies towards schools’ success.