The Influence in Principal Leadership Styles and Its Role in the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Malaysia

Abstract

Developing academic goals amongst students is a key aspect for achieving excellence across schools in Malaysia. It is meant to act as a benchmark to determine the effectiveness of a principal’s leadership. The leadership of a principal, and the school’s climate are the main issues which drive the achievement of students across national secondary schools (SMK) in Malaysia. This quantitative study aims to examine the influence and role of a principal’s leadership on the school climate, as well as its impact on the student’s academic achievement in domestic national secondary schools nationals on the East Coast of Malaysia. A total of 348 teachers were selected across vocational schools in the states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang, through the use of simple random sampling, for the purpose of quantitative reviews. The researchers used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to measure the leadership aspects of the principals, and the Organizational Health Inventory (OHI-M) to measure the climate of the school, as well as the achievement of academic students, which was measured using the CGPA of the schools in the examination areas over the last three years. The analysis of descriptive traits, for example, the number, percentage, scoring average, and the standard deviation was used to describe the demographics of the respondents, and analyse the data using regression, Pearson t-test correlations, and ANOVA. This helped to understand several key leadership factors, i.e., the International Transform Leadership, Tran Witness Leadership, Laissez-Faire Leadership, School Climate , and the Academic Achievement of the hypothesis testing, which was built according to the obtained statistics . The findings showed that the principal’s leadership influenced the climate across the school, and the achievement of the students. Therefore, it was proposed that the principal’s leadership needs to adopt the Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership, and Laissez-faire leadership as a guide in managing the school’s climate, especially in ensuring the teacher’s commitments, and the Student Academic Achievements, which can be further enhanced in line with the Malaysian

Education Quality Standards 2010 (SKPM), and the Malaysian Education Development Plan 2013 -2025.