Principals’ Transformational Leadership and Students’ Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Ijara Sub-County, Garissa County, Kenya

Transformational leadership represent the essential quality of successful management of schools. It creates, adaptive, innovative and dynamic organizations that are transforming. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of school principals’ transformational leadership on students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Ijara Sub-County, Garissa County, Kenya. The study was grounded on path-goal theory. A descriptive survey research design was employed. The target population comprised 5 public secondary schools, where 5 principals and 90 teachers in Ijara Sub-County were the unit of observation. Purposive sampling was used to include all the 5 principals as respondents while simple random sampling was used to select a sample of 73 teachers. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and interview schedule. The questionnaire was tested for validity using expert review and tested for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha. Data analysis was conducted with help of SPSS version 27.0 to yield descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The findings showed that transformational leadership has significant and positive influence on academic performance of students in the public secondary schools in Ijara Sub-County (r = 0.726, p < 0.05). Therefore, to enhance transformational leadership, school principals should launch focused programs to encourage and inspire teachers and students to pursue academic success. The research findings will benefit policymakers and education stakeholders in developing leadership training programs tailored to the needs of secondary schools in similar contexts. The research adds to the growing body of literature on inspirational motivation leadership, particularly in African settings where resource constraints and systemic problems are prevalent. Future researchers with needs similar to this problem will also find this research useful.