The role played by principals as managers and leaders of public schools in Swaziland

Abstract

Swaziland is a small country situated in-between South Africa and Mozambique towards the southern tip of Africa. As former British colony, achieving independence in 1968, Swaziland has a history of colonial education based and built on diverse education in the past. This study focuses specifically on role that principals play as managers and leaders in the Swaziland education sector and the management thereof. In total, six factors have been identified. They are Managerial involvement, Leadership involvement, Managerial transparency, Managerial effectiveness, Management-driven outputs and Conducive working environment. These factors explain a cumulative variance of 52 percent, but have a lower-order reliability as measured by Cronbach alpha (<0.60). The factors also do not correlate significantly with one another, indicating that the factors are individualistic in nature and should be managed as individual factors. The results are of value to education managers in Swaziland (and elsewhere), academia and future researchers.