ABSTRACT
The kind of leadership exhibited by a leader will greatly determine the level of performance of an organization. No institution can grow beyond the capacity of the human rci0t1rces. From the school perspective, Headteacher plays a key role in achievement of educational goals and objectives. The quality of the school largely depends on the leadership of the headteacher. Performance is determined by other parameters that are most closely interwoven but it is within the role of the Headteacher that the relationship can be most sensitive. There arc many examples around us of schools whose once glorious reputations have been brought lo through inadequate leadership. The purpose or the study was to investigate the influence of headteacher's leadership styles on students KCSE performance at public secondary schools in Maragua District, Central Province of Kenya. The study also sought to establish whether the leadership style exhibited by a headteacher could he used to predict performance of a school. The sample comprised of teachers and headteachers from some selected public secondary schools in Maragua District. The sample was selected using simple random sampling procedure. Data was collected using questionnaires. To interpret that data, frequencies, simple percentages, measures of central tendency, at-test and one-way Analysis Of Variance (ANOV J) was used. The study established that the headteachers appraised themselves to be more concerned with ,people, (democratic) than with task (autocratic). On the other hand, teachers rated their headteachers as being more concerned with the task dimension than with people dimension. The headteachers concern for people related significantly with students academic performance whereby, high concern for people related with high academic performance. No significant relationship was found between headteachers concerned for task and students KCSE performance. The findings or the study are discussed 111 relation to the improvement of academic perlimnance in secondary school
