Effects Of School Administration And Management On Grade Twelve (12) School Certificate Performance Of Day Secondary Schools: A Case Study Of Three Schools In Petauke District, Eastern Province Of Zambia

The performance of learners at school certificate level or grade twelve level has not been consistently good among day secondary schools despite the so many efforts that the government and its cooperating partners have provided to uplift the education opportunities of learners like free education policy and many others, still the outcomes have not been proportion to the inputs. A study therefore was done to try to unveil the leading factors to this under-performance of learners academically at school certificate level specifically dealing with day secondary schools. In this study, administration and management of a day secondary school was to be tasked for the under-performance of learners. The study made use of qualitative method with real data of performance of learners collected from guidance department, and information collected from learners, teachers, HODs and head teachers through questionnaires and interviews respectively. A case study research design was used to collect data from three selected day secondary schools of Petauke District, Eastern Zambia. The findings indicated that administration and management of the day secondary schools contributed a lot to the performance of learners academically through identification of key roles that institutional leadership played. Further, the findings indicated that indeed the performance of learners at school certificate level greatly depended on the administration and management of a day secondary school. Lastly, some practical practices of management were pointed out as proven to guarantee producing and maintaining of good results at the identified level  In summary, it was clearly revealed that with the right administration and management of day secondary schools, practicing best management practices, good academic performance at school certificate level would be harmonized. Additionally, the study made recommendations that included, putting up boarding facilities in day secondary schools so that learners were monitored to curb indiscipline, appointment of leadership with appropriate qualifications and experience, increase on existing infrastructure, establish good flow of information to and fro in the structure of management, have frequent career talks with learners, have a compulsory well defined program of rewarding and giving incentives to deserving learners and teachers, government to deploy good number of qualified teachers to day secondary schools and many other measures.