School Heads’ leadership practices in enhancing quality education: perspectives from six Rural Day Secondary Schools of Masvingo District in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

The study reported in this document was conceptualised and conducted as a research project towards a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. Therefore, this study explored educational leadership practices of School Heads and how such practices affected enhancement of the quality of education provided in Rural Day Secondary Schools of Masvingo District in Zimbabwe. Leadership practices in these schools has to show concern for enhancing quality education in order to lay a strong foundation for vision creation, coordinated and collaborative activities and effective implementation of the upgraded new curriculum (2015-2022). The question that comes to mind is the kind of leadership practices and strategies that are needed by Rural Day Secondary Schools to enhance quality education. The study was qualitative and interpretive in nature and employed semi-structured interviews and document reviews to generate data. It was conducted in six purposively sampled schools from a population of fifty (50) Rural Day Secondary Schools. The study found out that leadership practices in these schools laid emphasis on vision creation, collaboration and dialoguing, staff development, team building, effective resource management, building ethical culture and empowering teachers to enhance quality education in deprived rural school contexts. The study also found out that the contexts under which the school heads were operating were characterised by numerous contextual deprivations such as poor transport network and costs, poor health facilities, road conditions, poor health facilities, lack of clean water, heavy workloads, scarce material and financial resources for curriculum implementation and lack of information and communication technology. Amongst the key recommendations was a need to create several committees such as teaching and learning committee, materials development committee, resource mobilisation committee, programme and curriculum development committee, assessment committee, among others that can collaborate with other secondary school in Zimbabwe.