Effectiveness of Principals’ Leadership Styles in School Improvement and Students’ Academic Achievement in Government Secondary Schools of Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

This paper aimed at assessing the effectiveness of principals’ leadership styles in school improvement and students’ academic achievement in government secondary schools of Oromia region, Ethiopia. In this study, descriptive survey was employed and as such the data were collected by using questionnaires developed and pilot tested by the researchers. The study analyzed zones’ school inspection reports on the schools’ levels measured per as standards set by the Federal Ministry of Education and students’ academic results obtained from National Education Assessment and Examination Agency of three years (2017-2019). The study employed clustering, stratified and purposive sampling techniques to select 6 zones of Oromia region out of 20; 80 sample secondary schools out of 307 and 160 principals out of 240 and all of 320 teachers, respectively. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as means and standard deviations and independent samples t-test. The findings of this study revealed that practical implementations of transformational, instructional and transactional school leadership styles were above average. However, no changes were observed in standards of the secondary school because about 86.3% of the schools were found below the expected standards and students’ academic achievements became decreasing with fluctuating within the three years. Results indicate that effectiveness of the principals’ school leadership styles was not at its expected level in transforming the schools to the required standards and bringing about sustainable academic achievement. This calls for extra efforts and commitment primarily from the principals in order to reverse these conditions.