The roles of Headmasters in Administration: an analysis of practices from Muslim Secondary Schools in Dar es Salaam Region

The purpose of this study was to analyze the practices of headmasters of nine Muslim secondary schools in the Dar es Salaam Region. The focus was in analyzing the professional qualifications, religious knowledge, professional experience before appointment to headship, constraints that impinged with headmasters' performance, perceptions of headmasters' and the subordinates on the headmasters' practice, the outcome of the schools as measured by examination results and the suggestions for improving the performance of headmasters. The number of subjects involved in this study was 32, including nine headmasters, seven second masters, nine academic masters and eight discipline masters. Data were collected between 10th February and 20th March, 2000 using the questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and the focused-group interview. The findings indicated that Muslim school headmasters had professional qualifications and experience relevant to the posts they held although the majority had little religious education. It was further revealed that supervision of teaching and learning, coordinating the school with its owner and moral leadership, among other roles, were perceived as the most important roles by headmasters. Similarly, the study revealed that the factors which highly affected headmasters' performance were: reliance on student fees as a source of funds, lack of power and autonomy, misuse of funds by the owners of the schools and limited chances to communicate with the parents and the communities around the school. Lack of pre-service and in-service training for appointed headmasters was to some extent associated with poor performance in some of the headmasters' roles. It was thus recommended that, Muslims under the umbrella of their organisations, should plan for pre-service as well as in-service training to equip the headmasters with the required principles of leadership. Also the owners of the schools were urged to leave the day-to-day organization to headmasters and operate at strategic levels only in order to ease the interferences to headmaster's roles. Likewise, headmasters should have autonomy over financial expenditure and in selecting the teaching staff.