School management factors affecting students’ academic performance in community secondary schools: A case of selected schools in Ludewa district council

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the school management factors that affect Community Secondary Schools students‟ performance in Certificate of Secondary Education Examination in Tanzania. Four research questions were set to guide the study. These were to explore the extent to which the school management acquired sufficient and quality staff; to analyse the extent to which the school management promoted professional staff development; to examine the extent to which the school management exercised clinical supervision in school and to assess the students‟ academic performance in CSEE in the sampled schools. Specific questions (as stated in chapter one) in relation to the tasks guided the collection and analysis of data. The study was conducted in Ludewa district. Three Community Secondary Schools were sampled out of 17. The sample comprised of 78 respondents including 3 heads of schools, 18 teachers, 48 students and 9 form four graduates from the three sampled schools. A descriptive research design using mainly qualitative strategy was used in data collection and analysis. The study found that students‟ poor academic performance in community secondary schools was mainly influenced by school management factors including unequal distribution of school working staff, both teaching and non teaching, poor planning, organising, and controlling by school management which led to poor supervision in teaching and learning activities. It was further noted that poor academic performance of students in community secondary school was contributed by unavailability of quality sufficient teaching and non teaching staff in schools. Lack of adequate subject based seminars/workshops and teachers‟ in-service-training to teachers, both long term and short term is another contributing factor, because most of the reached respondents revealed that some of them had stayed for more than 10 years without any seminar/washer/workshop or even short course in-service-training to make them up to date with the new technological developments. The researcher suggests school management to ensure availability of school-based plans to conduct in-service training for teaching staff, to conduct clinical supervision of the schools learning and teaching activities, the authority responsible for education to ensure sufficient and quality teaching and nonteaching staffs are allocated proportionally to the schools.