School Heads' Administrative Skills and Teachers' Performance

Abstract

It is common knowledge that leaders possessing strong administrative skills create an environment conducive to effective teaching and positive student outcomes. In this context, this study analyzed the school heads' administrative skills and teachers' performance in a large school division in Central Philippines during the School Year 2021-2022. It used a 20-item valid and reliable self-made questionnaire to collect data from 326 sampled teacher-respondents. The ensuing analysis showed a very high level (VHL) of school heads' administrative skills in human resource and financial management and got a high-level rating in physical facilities and crisis management. Meanwhile, teachers' performance during the same period was found to be "very satisfactory," with the shorter-tenured teachers with lower educational backgrounds obtaining a very satisfactory rating. Their longer-tenured counterparts with higher educational attainment understandably got rated "outstanding." Finally, no significant relationship was found between school heads' administrative skills and teachers’ performance. These findings call for facilitating district-wide interactive workshops to further upgrade school heads’ administrative skills, modeling the success stories of school heads in other high-performing schools, and letting teachers internalize the scoring criteria of IPCRF to possibly serve as a wakeup call or an intrinsic motivation to further elevate their performance. As a final point, this paper suggests integrating school heads’ professional reflection and learning that, despite the apparent teacher autonomy reflected in the absence of a correlation between school heads’ administrative skills and teachers’ performance, the former still has the immense potential to further elevate the latter’s teaching performance.