Principals' Leadership and Teachers' Collaboration Fin the Performance of Private Secondary Schools of South Eastern states of Nigeria

This study examined principals’ leadership styles and teachers’ collaboration in the performance of private secondary schools of South Eastern States of Nigeria. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted correlational survey design. The population of the study comprised 15,200 teachers in the 2,284 approved private secondary schools in the 21 education zones in the South East, Nigeria. The sample size was made up 3,000, comprising 2,500 approved teachers, 500 principal. The sample was chosen using cluster and purposive sampling techniques. Two instruments were used for this study, Principals Leadership Style in Schools (PLSS) and Teachers’ Collaboration in Private Schools (TCPS) with 40 items for principals and 10 items for teachers. The four specialists-two from the department of measurement and evaluation and two from the department of educational administration and planning. The reliability was ascertained using Cronbach alpha statistics which gave the indices as 0.79 for principal’s leadership styles and 0.81 for teacher’s collaboration. Research questions were answered using simple linear regression statistics while hypotheses were tested with t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings among others were that, there is a high relationship between principals leadership styles and performance of private secondary schools in the south eastern, Nigeria. The study found that too there is high relationship between principals’ support for teacher’s collaboration and performance of private secondary schools in south eastern states of Nigeria. The study found that too there is high relationship between principals’ support for teachers’ collaboration and performance of private secondary schools in south eastern states of Nigeria. Based on the findings, the study recommends that private secondary school principals and their management should endeavour to encourage teacher’s collaboration. There is also the need to give periodic orientation to both new and old teachers.