Examining The Role Of Leadership At An Academically Successful Girls-Only National High School In Kenya

ABSTRACT

The work of sustaining academic success in the midst of increasing accountability mandates, dwindling resource allocations, and increasing student diversity can be daunting. However, research related to successful school leadership identifies four core practices; setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing instruction that provide evidence of turning around schools and sustaining academic success. Evidence of these practices across a variety of contexts provided rationale for utility of the framework for the Kenyan context, where educational leadership is understudied. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of school leadership to the culture of academic success at Mountain Girls High School. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and coded in three separate cycles to identify emerging patterns and themes related to the four core practices of successful school leadership. Our findings show, Mountain GHS’s principal employed the four leadership practices in order to sustain academic success over time. These findings demonstrate the relevance of the leadership practices to the Kenyan context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. National schools in Kenya are not neighborhood schools. They admit students all across the country based on a quarter system set by the government.