ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to find out the leadership behaviours of school heads of public and private junior high school head teachers in Tafo Sub Metro in Kumasi Metropolis and its impact of the students academic performance. The sample for the study consisted of 120 teachers comprising of 60 from public schools and 60 from private schools, together with 9 public school head masters and other 9 private school head masters. Questionnaire in the form of likert format ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4) was used to collect data. The reliability estimates for teachers was 0.85 and that of the head masters was 0.78. The methodological inquiry was quantitative research approach using descriptive cross-sectional design which included the following
statistical analyses: mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions. Findings indicated that whiles teachers in private schools agreed that their head masters employed human relations in managing their schools, their counterparts in public schools disagreed. Again, whiles head masters in the private schools agreed that they employ instructional leadership their counterparts in public schools disagreed; both teachers and head masters in public and private schools noted that building trust or involving teachers in decision making influence the students’ academic orientation. Based on the findings, it was recommended that government should make conscious effort to improve the leadership behavious of head masters in public school by running in-service training of leadership behaviours for them and also school heads should make deliberate efforts to involve all teachers in decision making process to make them have a sense of ownership of schools and to improve the students’ academic orientations.
