The Relationship between School Leadership Practices and Students’ Academic Achievement in Selected Secondary and Preparatory Schools in the Somali Regional State

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which school leadership practice is related to students’ academic achievement in the context of the Somali region. A correlational research design was used in which data were generated through a questionnaire administered to a sample of 337 teachers and the academic achievement of students of Grade 10 and 12 national exams. Data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, correlation and multiple regressions. The findings unveiled that there was a statistically significant correlation between school leadership practices and students’ academic achievement in the Somali region. Furthermore, the results of the regression analysis indicate that framing school goals positively predicted academic achievement of grade 12 natural (  = 0.91, p < 0.01) and social science (  = 0.80, p < 0.006) students, whereas communicating school goals (  = 0.12, p < 0.38), supervising and evaluating instruction (  = -0.61, p < -1.47) and protecting instructional time (  = 0.54, p < 1.66) had a non-significant effect. It is recommended that school principals should be trained and they should practice those activities which have a higher probability of being associated with better school outcomes. Accordingly, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the concept of schooling (input) to the concept of learning (output) to transform the school leadership system and improve student academic achievement.