The role of school managers in Greater Accra region in the academic performance of senior high school students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the school manager’s practices adopted by school managers in Senior High Schools in Greater Accra and their effects on students’ academic performance. The work also aimed at finding out the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the practices of public-Senior High School managers in Greater Accra so that one could predict the nature of effectiveness of public Senior High Schools’ managers performance in Ghana. The philosophical underpinning of the study was positivism. The study employed quantitative research approach and adopted descriptive survey design. The population of study were school managers, teachers and students of Greater Accra public Senior High Schools (SHS). Systematic sampling technique was used to sample the respondents. The study employed questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. Data collected comprised of 376 respondents: 10 school mangers, 96 teachers and 266 students, Also, 100 students test results in public SHS in Greater. Cronbach alpha was used to test the reliability of the instrument. The work also tested for face validity, content validity and criterion validity. Quantitative technique was used to analyse the data. Descriptive data were analysed using means, frequencies and percentages and the hypothesis were tested using Pearson’s product moment correlation and multiple regression. The study found in the descriptive analysis that school managers practice of instructional supervision practice, building positive school climate and teacher professional development practice were major contributory practices that ensured students' academic performance in public SHS in Greater Accra region. Hypothesis three however, found that there was a low negative significant correlation between school managers’ practice of building positive school climate and students, academic performance. Though the opinion of the respondents agreed that school managers, practices of instructional supervision, teacher professional development and creating positive school climate were effective, the results from correlation analysis found SM practices low and negative with their relationship with students' academic performance.in SHS in Greater Accra Region. The regression analysis found that the combine effect of the three main variables gave a p-value of 0.024 less than the Significant p-value of 0.05. This indicating that there is a significant relationship between school managers' practices and students, academic performance