The role of transformational leadership in well performing schools in the Eastern Cape

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the role of transformational leadership in well performing schools in two rural secondary schools in the Eastern Cape. The poor performance of the Eastern Cape in National Senior Certificate examinations is well documented in media press and in academic publications. Yet, there are schools that, although they share much of the context and culture of other schools within the Province, perform surprisingly well. Little is known about whether such successes could be attributed to transformational leadership. As such, this study investigated the practice of transformational leadership behaviours, challenges faced by transformational leaders, strategies they engaged in to overcome challenges and successes of such transformational leadership on increased learner achievement. Case study research design was used involving semi-structured interviews to collect data from a sample of two principals and three members of the Senior Management Team. The selection of the two secondary schools was based on their rural context, poor quintile category, evidence of improvement and continued high levels of learner achievement in the National Senior Certificate examinations in the past five years. The findings have shown that the principal of the first school, after engaging in transformative strategies aimed at improvement, managed to turn itself around. On the other hand, for the second principal, no findings showed that the school had, in the past experienced poor performance, despite being rural and servicing learners coming from poor socio-economic conditions. Rather, it has a history of being a well- performing school and it was shown that the principal has managed to sustain such successes in the period under study. For future research, quantitative studies and observations could provide results for generalization to the entire region. It is time for principals committed to turning around a low-performing school to give priority to teacher growth and professional development.