Influence of heads of departments' leadership behaviour on students' performance in Kenya certificate of secondary education examination in Kiambu East district, Kenya

Abstract

The Kenya government has a responsibility to offer quality education at all levels of the education system and to ensure excellence for all. Only those students who excel in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), get a chance to further their studies in the universities and other tertiary institutions. In Kiambu East District the mean score of students in K.C.S.E in the period 2002-2008 has been below 4.90 with a transition rate of between 4.0% to 7.76% between 2002 and 2008 to the universities (Kiambu District Education Day Program 2000). The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which Heads of Departments (H.O.Ds') practice of initiating structure and consideration dimension of leadership behaviour influenced teachers to assist learners to excel in K.C.S.E. Four null hypotheses were formulated to guide this study. These sought to establish whether there was a relationship between H.O.Ds' Leadership behaviour and their demographic variables of age, gender and length of service; the leadership behavior and the category of schools; their leadership behaviour and the Principals' behaviour and whether their leadership behaviour influenced students' K.C.S.E scores. Review of the literature focused on the role of H.O.Ds in secondary schools, the importance of timely provision of teaching-learning resources and the importance of good leadership in secondary schools. The theoretical framework was based on Distributed Leadership Theory which is a democratic and collective form of leadership that allows all teachers to share in decision making, The study adopted ex-post factor research design; data were collected from 64 H.O.Ds and 130 ordinary teachers drawn from 18 schools in the district using questionnaires. Stratified sampling was used to determine the respondents. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Studies (S.P.S.S) and revealed that there was a significant relationship between the leadership behaviour exhibited by the H.O.Ds and the scores of students in K.C.S.E. Based upon the findings, the researcher recommended that there is need for in-service training of H.O.D.s. The researcher suggested that further studies should be conducted in the following areas: • Factors that influence job satisfaction of H.O.Ds in public secondary schools in Kiambu East District • The long-term educational and social implications of paying attention to the education of the girl-child and of having several well-performing girls' secondary schools in the district without commensurate attention being paid to the education of the boy child.