School Management System and Governance of Elementary School Heads as Perceived by the School Community

The role of school management and governance is increasingly acknowledged as important for providing effective services at all education levels. It is important to acknowledge since it is considered as the strong foundation of quality education. With this the researchers of this study aimed to determine the students' and teachers' perceptions toward school governance; to know the significant influence of instructional leadership towards the effectiveness of school management system and governance; and to identify if there is a significant relationship between students' and teachers' perceptions towards various areas of school management system and governance. Using the sequential explanatory mixed-methods design strategy in which both descriptive quantitative and qualitative research design, and cluster random sampling method, 341 students and 243 teachers as respondents were selected from 15 elementary schools from San Miguel North District, Schools Division of Bulacan, Philippines. After the analysis using both descriptive and inferential statistics, the results shows that school community perceived that the school heads provide leadership in the improvement of the instructional program as “always” in terms of instructional leadership, clear mission, parent and community involvement, teacher involvement, safe and orderly environment, frequent monitoring, positive school climate, opportunities for learning, and budget allocation. Accordingly, the results revealed that instructional leadership has highly significant relationship to school management system and governance and students' teachers' perceptions toward school management system and governance indicated that highly significant to significant difference were acquired in areas of instructional leadership and parent and community involvement. Therefore, school community perceived almost the same perspectives in accordance with leadership behavior and effective parent and community participation. To sum up, results implied that students and teachers were strongly agreed that instructional leadership influenced almost all the areas of school management system and governance in obtaining school's effectiveness. Also, the respondents' answers suggested that school community has almost similar perceptions when it comes to principal's instructional leadership and involvement of parent and community with the school administrators.