LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AND SUCCESSION PRACTICES IN GOVERNMENT SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF HARARI REGIONAL STATE

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the leadership development and succession practice in Go vernment Secondary Schools of Harari Regional State. In this study, descriptive survey research design was used with mixed research. Among the 4 government secondary schools in the region, 3 were taken as a sample by using purposive sampling method.The sample teachers 138 were selected by using strat ified random sampling technique.Additionally,32 school leaders (3 school principals, 6 vice principals, 12 unit leaders,11 department heads) and 5 secondary school supervisors were selected by available s ampling technique.The instruments of data collection were questionnaires, semi structured interview a nd document review.The quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as mean, freque ncy, percentage and standard deviation; and inferential statistics such as t test and p value.The qualita tive data gathered were analyzed through narration.The findings of the study indicated that the leader ship development practices in secondary school of Harari Regional State were poor in assessment and coaching development strategies.Regarding succession planning practice, the findings revealed that th ere were poor performance in human resource planning, reward management, talent management and diversity management.And, medium performance in performance management, training and developme nt, carrier management and management involvement. And, finally regarding the assignment of leader s in school, the finding indicated that political assignment is used as popular way of selecting a leader for the position.The major challenges of schools in implementing leadership development were turnove r of principals/vice principals, disproportional number of supervisors to secondary schools, Woreda off ices influenced the recruiting of candidates for succession planning, poor self development culture of s chool leaders through CPD and loss of autonomous capacity of schools in governing the school.Gener ally, it is possible to conclude that assignment of leaders to position was more of political and the pract ice of leadership development is not upto the expectation. Therefore, Regional Education Bureau is adv ised to have Leadership development and succession planning manual which is clear and official to all employees from the day of induction and be reviewed after certain period of time to address these chall enges,schools and supervisor have to take the responsibility of developing heads of department and uni t leaders in cooperation with the Regional Education Bureau Secondary schools supervisors are encou raged to strictly monitor CPD program especially for school leaders.Besides, they have to make sure w hether the issue of leadership development and succession planning is incorporated in SIP