The impact of leadership styles on school perfomances.

Abstract

Leadership is one the most fascinating topics whether it is in business, politics, private or public organisations. The South African government spends a lot of money on education. As a result, a lot is expected from school leadership in terms of school results. In line with the above statements, the aim of this study will explore the leadership styles employed by school leadership and how it impacts on school performance. Matriculation examination results for Msinga Circuit have not been good in the last three years. This research is grounded on the proposition that leadership, along with challenges, is the greatest factor to explain this performance. While there is an enormous amount of international literature on this topic, there is a dire need for local insights. The Distributed Leadership (DL) theory was used as a lens through which school leadership styles impact on school performance was investigated. The study was exploratory and quantitative in nature. The study employed the purposive sampling method. The sample of the research comprised all the school principals and teachers of Msinga Circuit secondary schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The Distributed Leadership Readiness Scale (DLRS) instrument was considered suitable for data collection. Forty-five secondary schools were carefully chosen to partake in this research at the end of 2016. The data was collected among all the school principals and some teachers of Msinga Circuit. Forty-three schools (95,5%) and 185 participants (52,9%) completed and returned the survey. SPSS (version 25) was used to analyse data. The findings of the research reveal a significant link between the leadership styles and the organisational performance, as well as challenges and school performance. In addition, the Distributed Leadership style was perceived as the most practised by Msinga Secondary school principals. The most unexpected finding of the study was that both school leadership and school challenges have an impact on school performance, whereas isolation has no impact. The study recommends that policymakers invest most of their resources on addressing school leadership and challenges, especially in rural areas, in order to improve school performance.