Performance of School Heads and Teachers in Public Elementary Schools

Republic Act No. 9155, otherwise known as the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001, mandates that all schools shall be headed by school heads who are trained, monitored, and held accountable for leading the school improvement process. On the contrary, the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST) defines the standards and expectations of teachers' increasing levels of knowledge, practice, and professional engagement. Anent to these legal bases, this study sought to determine the levels and relationship between the leadership performance of school heads and the teaching performance of elementary school teachers in the Division of Bacolod City in the School Year 2020-2021. The study respondents were 45 elementary school heads and 321 randomly selected public elementary school teachers. This study employed the sequential explanatory mixed method design involving the phases of conducting surveys to the respondents and interviewing school heads and elementary school teachers as it delved into probing the performances of the respondents. Mean, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wall H tests, and simple linear regression analysis were utilized for the treatment analyses of data. The explication process followed the six-step thematic analysis introduced by Braun and Clarke. The findings revealed that the leadership performance of school heads and teachers' teaching performance, when taken as a whole and grouped according to variables, were outstanding. A significant difference in the leadership performance of school heads was noted when they were grouped according to educational attainment. Conversely, a discernible difference was not found when grouped according to age and years of experience as school heads. The teaching performance of the school teachers showed a variation when grouped according to age and educational attainment. Meanwhile, no significant difference existed when they were grouped according to years of teaching experience. Leadership performance cannot predict teaching performance. The school heads considered preserving school buildings, engaging teachers in development activities, properly using operational expenditures, and interacting with stakeholders as best practices. The instructors regarded differentiated activities, essential learning competencies, interacting with community partners, and time management as their best practices.