Impact of Principals Intellectual Stimulation on Students Performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in Public Secondary Schools, Kenya

Education is considered not only as human right (UNECSO, 2011, United Nations, 2012), but the engine of national growth for all societies. This study was driven by the necessity to advance students academic performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations in Mbooni West Sub-county, Kenya. The study was guided by two objectives i. Establish the extent to which principals leadership practice of intellectual stimulation (IS) in public secondary schools impact students performance at KCSE examinations. ii. Examine the extent to which principals demographic variables influence leadership practice of intellectual stimulation in public secondary schools. The study targeted 42 public secondary schools in the Sub-county. A sample of 38 schools was selected using Simple random technique whereby selections are made purely by chance. The study employed descriptive research design. Questionnaires, focus groups discussion, interviews, and Document Analyses were used to collect data. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. In descriptive statistics, frequencies, percentages, means, variance, and standard deviations were calculated and presented in tables. Pearsons Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was computed to test if relationships exist or does not exist between intellectual stimulation and students academic performance tested at alpha value 0.05 or 0.01 levels of significance. Further, t-test was used to determine whether principals demographic variables influence the leadership practices of intellectual stimulation. The findings shown that, intellectual stimulation has positive significant influence on students performance at KCSE examinations with.198** at alpha value 0.01 level (2-tailed). Further, no significant influence found of principals demographic variables of working experience and academic qualification on leadership practice of intellectual stimulation. Future research should embrace larger sample sizes of principals and teachers using different methodology. Thus, examine influence of principals transformational leadership practices on collective teachers efficacy in public secondary schools. This study recommends higher learning institutions to restructure comprehensive courses on TLP for teacher trainees to enhance establishment of effective schools leadership in Kenya.