Balancing External Demands and School Priorities

A normalised approach to leadership with prescribed top-down decision-making processes might be restrictive to schools. School leaders appear to experience difficulty balancing between external demands and internal school improvement initiatives. In interviews, principals suggest that demands to respond to external pressure took attention away from teaching and learning. Bidobe and Bagamu principals contend the centralised accountability system interfering with focus on students learning and achievement.

We face frustration from the work environment. You may want to change the way people work or improve students’ talents, but we are just pushed to produce results. This comes from the top, our education system; they no longer value anything else apart from examination grades. Therefore, there are frustrations from the office: TSC, CDE, QASO auditors, all roving on your back, you feel witch- hunted, you feel frustrated.

This excerpt highlights school leaders’ frustration arising from restrictive managerial

but also unfavourable for pedagogical productivity. Bagamu principal deplores the retributive appraisal systems that narrowly focus on examination grades, ignoring other educational values. He seems to perceive the accountability processes as exasperating and limiting to school leadership innovativeness. Tensions between restrictive managerial demands, unclear role expectations and astringent accountability systems appear to shape leadership practices in schools.

Political euphoria and religious partialities devoid of accompanied relevant resources and professional support appear frustrating and intimidating to school leaders. Hostile

expectations from above groups seem to exacerbate school leadership challenges by exerting unyielding pressure on principal. Bageno principal shares a scenario in which her

predecessor, in the effort to fulfil the dual demand by MOE and the church, experiences tensions that caused her attrition. The current principal explains how the predecessor failed to cope with the conflicting church and MOE expectations, eventually exiting headship.

When MOE launched FSE in 2008, we got double admission of students from the ministry. The church

resisted this move, but the principal could not send students away. The church, therefore, turned against the principal. There was a tug of war from all sides. Due to the strenuous relationship the principal left for sabbatical leave (Emphasis)…she decided to quit. I took over the school as the

principal.

This extract illustrates how school leaders bear responsibility and eventualities of adverse expectations. The emphasis outlines the dilemma principal experience and indicates they suffer eventualities of conflicting decisions by MOE and the church. It further outlines the effect such accumulative pressure has on serving principals. Undergoing such emotional scenarios with little support may make the work of school leadership unattractive. School leaders’ response to such pressures may affect their leadership practices.

Similarly, Lidude principal is embattled between community-opinion leaders’ enforced elevation of Lidude School and the school’s limited capacity to meet county status

expectations. Elevation to county status without accompanying human and material resources seem to increase internal tensions. The LST explains how this action conferred tension to senior leaders to perform akin to county league, contending against established, well- resourced and advantaged schools within this category, “This school’s resources do not match the title given. Rising to county level was political. It was prominent people’s interest; some of whom are politicians looking for votes. However, they just elevated the name; did not supply resources required to match the title.” Equally, Lidude principal laments,

People just demand results without offering much support. They openly tell us we are not comfortable with the results, you have to do something: Yet teachers are not enough, learning materials are not there, parents are not paying fees. When you ask them how to improve results with all these problems, they say we are the experts

These excerpts communicate that changes externally enforced sometimes differ with school level capacities. Community leaders’ desire to elevate Lidude school to county status appear to arise from political euphoria devoid of professional or infrastructural support. The teacher illustrates uninformed political pressure vested in individual interests of a good public image and desire to appease a voting population. The principal indicates how school principals experience and take responsibility for such erroneous decisions amid limited resources. The unyielding pressure is deemed intimidating, especially to new principals who struggle to turn around the schools’ achievement trend. In the effort to meet these external demands and maintain their leadership position, principals may reactively respond to the prevailing situation by practicing heavily controlling managerial leadership practices.

Community expectations, preferences and cultural orientations appear antithetical to policy and professional requirements for progressive leadership practices. While policy makes assumptions about unreserved reception of educational initiatives and TSC employees, the reality appears disquieting. Interview conversations with participants in schools and LEA suggest community’s hostile reception to teachers. Participants suggest that tensions arise from community preferences against policy requirements in areas akin to students’

admission, leadership appointments and succession. Sideki DOS suggests that whereas the policy requires student admission processes to be centralised, community understanding of the same seems limited.

Parents around have a negative attitude towards the school. In fact, the community out there fights us a

lot; they say we are a school that hates locals because we admit few students from within. They do not know MOE centrally carry out the selection and give us a list. When they come, look at the list and see few local students, they say that is not our school (Emphasis). Some of us are very unpopular because

parents think we are the ones who deny them a place.

The extract highlights tensions arising from centralised admission processes and local community expectations. The emphasis suggests that these tensions strain the school- community relationship. Nonetheless, school leaders become targets and take responsibility for such tensions; facing aggressive and hostile attitudes from local members and leaders. This scenario resonates well with PA Chair’s claims about a local MP denying Sideki

financial support basing on admission data. Sideki principal also refers to local community’s adversative dispositions when explaining deputy principal’s succession dilemma. These

school-community tensions indicate that community expectations antithetical to policy requirements may appear threatening to school-leaders working environments. Subsequently, principals may practice protective leadership; isolating and marginalising stakeholder

involvement and becoming critical of who should join the leadership team because of existing non-trusting relationships (as witnessed in some C1 and C2 schools). In other circumstances, principals’ feelings of vulnerability may be less attractive for teachers to join leadership teams and support overall school improvement; exacerbating teacher management tensions.