Comparative Study on Principal Leadership Effectiveness in Government and Private Secondary Schools of Hawassa City Administration

The purpose of this study was to compare principal leadership effectiveness between those working in government and private secondary schools of Hawassa City Administration. Comparative research design was used.  Eight and four schools from government and private secondary schools respectively were selected purposively because the principals served for more than four years and teachers could judge their effectiveness. Using Yamane’s (1967) formula, 280(150 from government and 130 from private schools) teachers made the sample. The sample was distributed across the eight schools proportionally.  Participants were selected using simple random sampling techniques. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The study found a significant difference in effectiveness between government and private secondary school principals for Government school principals. To maintain and/or enhance the overall school effectiveness, it is recommended that principals should be supported by all the constituents, particularly teachers and the community. Keywords: comparative study , government secondary schools , principal’s leadership effectiveness, Private secondary schools DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-28-07 Publication date :October 31 st 2019

The indicators of effective school leaders according to Kouzes and Posner (2002) are as follows; strategic thinkers, role models, decision makers, mentors, mediators, consensus seekers or builders, self-evaluators, team creators and promoters, fair and balanced, good communicators, lead through influence and example setting, takers and givers of feedback, emphatic listeners, walking the talk, visionary, have service mentality and technical or contextual expertise. Even though, a number of variables were identified in the literature, this research compared principals effectiveness in private and government school using the following variables that were identified by Smith and Andrew (1999), Kouzes and Posner (2002) and Popa (2012) which make a lealdler effective. These variables are: Effectiveness in organizational planning and goal setting (visionary), foster participation in school decision making, monitor students progress, team building and promoting, and good communicator. These variables were also stated in school improvement program document as a role of school principal (see MoE, 2011a) so that these are crucial to assess the effectiveness of school principals. Even though there are other variables included in the document this study delimited to these roles in order to compare the two schools.

The Education System in Ethiopia
The education system in Ethiopia as currently structured, consists of the first primary cycle (grades 1-4), Second primary cycle (grades 5-8), Lower secondary cycle (grades 9-10) Preparatory school cycle (grades 11-12), Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) (10+1, 10+2 and 10+3), Higher education (institutions that provide undergraduate and postgraduate programs (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE). 2002). The preprimary level created for children aged 4-6 years and is dominated by privately run institutions, with only few per cent of students at this level attending government schools (MoE, Education Statistics 2009). However, by the time children enter the primary level (age 7-13 years), over 80 per cent are enrolled in government institutions and the same is true for secondary schools. Secondary schools in this research refer to lower secondary cycle (grades 9-10). In Ethiopia private schools are independent schools, which are established by nongovernmental agencies and individuals, for profit making venture while government schools were established by government, which are free from payment and opened to all members of the society.
Currently, observations show many Ethiopia families who can particularly prefer to send their children to private schools. It is believed that teachers in private schools show much dedication and appear to perform better on their job compared to those in Government. This has been attributed to the deplorable conditions in government schools (Solomon, 2019).The poor quality of teaching and learning process in government schools has led many parents to choose private schools. It is also believed by parents that private schools in Ethiopia are more efficient and effective. Teshome (2017) in his findings reported a number of reasons why parents prefer private school as that learning in private schools leads to more academic achievements than in public schools, private schools make rigorous selection of students, admitting students with appropriate age from families having higher levels of education and private schools provide more access to classrooms and teachers, attractive work environment, sufficient facilities, qualified teachers, enriched curricula and focused on results.
All the secondary schools in Ethiopia follow the same curriculum set by the Ministry of Education, but the academic achievement of students from private schools have been better than that of the government schools. This is likely the reason people think private schools are better than government schools even though teachers in Government schools are believed to be better paid and more qualified and schools have better facilities. In Hawassa City Administration, it is assumed by general public that principals in private schools are more effective on their job and they handle the staff effectively and make them produce good results. It is observed that although public schools seem to have more qualified teachers and principals have relatively better facilities, nevertheless, they did not attract much patronage especially from the elite, rich and even the government workers.
Thus, this research assessed the differences in effectiveness of leadership between principals working in Government and those working in private school through the following research questions. 1) Are the perceptions on teachers about principals' leadership effectiveness in both government and private general secondary schools? 2) Which factors of effectiveness predict principal leadership effectiveness in government and private secondary schools?
The capabilities of school leaders vary greatly, and some are more effective than others. One way to analyze the effectiveness of school principals is to simply ask members of their organizations for perceptual ratings (Johnson, 2006). The position(s) of respondents in organizations and their access to important evaluative information, especially teachers, gives them insights into organizational effectiveness in relation to leadership (Johnson 2006). For this reason, this study used teachers' responses as a source of data to assess the effectiveness of the principals.

METHODS AND MATERIALS
In this study, comparative research design was used to respond to the research questions. Eight schools (four from government and four from private) secondary schools were selected purposively. The principals in these schools had served for more than four years, a period long enough for that teacher to able to judge their effectiveness. Using Yamane's (1967) formula 280 (150 from government and 130 from private) teachers made the sample from the two groups). The sample was distributed to the eight schools proportionally. All participants from each school were selected using simple random sampling techniques. The questionnaire, developed by the researcher was used to collect data after pilot survey. Pilot test was conducted to check validity and reliability. The respondents were asked to rate their principals using a five-point scale (very high 5=, high = 4, medium = 3, low = 2, and very low = 1). Data were analyzed using descriptive as well as inferential statistical measures. The mean value of each item in the tables indicates the average mean values of the items under each variable (item). For example, organizational planning and goal setting item has four different questions related to it. The mean value thus indicate the average of all the four items. The same is true for the rest four items.

RESULT OF THE STUDY
The sample profile of the participants indicates that the average age of the sample was 31.6 years. From the total participants, 63.6% were male and 36.4% were females. In terms of educational status 89.7% had first degree while the rest 10.3% were second degree holders. Participants from government, on an average, had 10.6 years of experience and from private schools on average had 4.6 years of experience. Table 1 below shows the result of mean value and t-test results used in comparing the effectiveness of principals in the two groups of schools. Leadership effectiveness depends on multiple constituencies. This study examined whether there exists significance differences in the effectiveness of school leadership between Government and private schools on the variables on leadership effectiveness (organizational planning and goal setting, level of participation in decision making, monitoring students' progress, team building and good communication skills) as perceived by the teachers.
With regard to the first item, teachers in both government and private secondary schools perceive their principals as highly effective with the mean value of 3.51 and 3.66 respectively. In relation of teachers' participation in decision making, government school principals were more effective than the private school principals. This was reported by the mean value of 3.20 and 1.64 for government and private schools respectively. For the third item, it was reported by private school teachers that their principals are highly effective with mean value of 3.46 and government school teachers rated their principal as very low with the mean value of 1.82.
In relation to the fourth and the fifth items (team building and promoting and good communicator), teachers in government and private schools perceive their principals differently. For both items, principals in private schools were perceived as less effective than government school principals (See Table 1).
Regression analysis was done to identify the most important predictor variable(s) for principals effectiveness in secondary schools of Hawassa City Administration. Table 2a and 2b depicts the result of the regression between perceived control of independent variables (factors that determine leadership effectiveness) and dependent variable (principals' effectiveness). Preliminary analyses were performed for the two groups of data to ensure no violation of the assumption of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity. Similarly, the model summary in Table 2b reports how much of the total variance in the dependent variable is uniquely explained by that independent variables and how much R square would drop if it wasn't included in the model. From the Table 2a the independent variables in the private secondary schools data have a partial coefficient of .621. If we square this we get .385, indicating that all the independent variables uniquely explain 38 percent of the variance in leadership effectiveness.
The regression analysis in the following Table also indicated the contribution of each independent variable (in this case leadership role) when the other variables held constant.  Table 3a and 3b help us to determine which of the variables included in the model contributed to the prediction of the dependent variable in both group of schools. The largest beta value in the government school is .143, which is for good communication. This shows that increasing effective communication makes the strongest unique contribution to explaining the principal effectiveness in Government schools when the variance explained by all other variables in the model is controlled for. The other variables are not making a significant unique contribution to the prediction of the dependent variable. This may be due to overlap with other independent variables in the model.
The private secondary schools' data indicated that the largest beta value is .603, which is for organizational planning and goal setting. This means that this variable makes the strongest unique contribution to explaining principal effectiveness, when the variance explained by all other variables in the model is controlled for. The beta value for good communication was slightly lower (.012), indicating that it made less of a contribution.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The descriptive statistics, the mean value, indicated that principals in government schools are more effective with regard to organizational planning and goal setting, fostering participation in decision making, team building and team promoting and good communication. On the other hand, private secondary school leaders were also highly effective in organizational planning and goal setting, and monitoring students' progress. An independent t-test was conducted to compare each variable for government and private secondary schools. As it indicated there was no significant difference in organizational planning and goal setting score for government ( ̅ = 3.64, SD= 1.14) and private, ̅ =3.66, SD= 1.17; t (230)= 1. 95, p=.105 (two-tailed). In all other variables Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.10, No.28, 2019 there were significant differences between government and private secondary schools scores (see Table 1).
From the above presentation one can conclude that government school principals were reported to exhibit higher levels of effectiveness in three variables compared to private secondary school principals (fostering participation in school decision making, team building and communication). This shows that effective leader clearly communicates to staff about the work, solves problems and there is widely practiced co-teaching to transfer knowledge and instructional practices. This shows that government secondary school leaders were more effective than private school principals with respect to participation in school decision making, team building and communication.
On the other hand, private school principals were more effective than government schools in monitoring students' progress. The result may imply that in private school the use of data garnered from assessments and test as well as to drive instruction and teacher evaluation. It may indicate that in these schools, tests accommodate a range of entry points and teachers in private use extensive student data to determine instructional strategies and gaps in achievement are used to plan specific interventions. In addition to that the number of students per class in private schools was small compared to government, which is more than 70 students in class. As to the knowledge of the researcher in Ethiopia principals in private schools paid more than that of the government schools. That may matter a lot.
The result also indicated both groups of schools were more effective in organizational planning and goal setting. Since the two groups of schools were effective in planning and goal setting indicate that these schools set very ambitious performance targets and communicate these targets to the school community.
The key finding the study reported was that there is a significant difference between government and private secondary schools with government secondary school principals being more effective than private school principals in most of the variables. But in the actual situation in Hawassa City Administration private schools perform better than government secondary schools. It was reported that the contribution of the above mentioned variables were very small, about 5%. This implies that this may be due to other factors other than principals' effectiveness, the recruitment of competent teachers, good pay for teachers, teaching and well-set control system, and good enrollment system. Thus, it is recommended that further study be needed to identify factors other than principals' effectiveness that attracts people to private schools.
There is growing evidence to suggest that leader's effectiveness is influenced by the perceptions and expectations of the subordinates (Williams, 2013). The results of this study show that if teacher's perceptions of their principals are effective in such areas as organizational planning and goal setting, decision making and communication skills and monitoring learning progress, the principals may be more likely to be effective. Therefore, in order to maintain and/or enhance the overall school effectiveness, principals understand and observe the variables that contribute to effectiveness. In addition to that they must get support from all the constituents, particularly from their teachers and the community.