Determinants of Student Performance – A Headmaster's Perspective

After many years in the comfort of general public trust, education has come under scrutiny. Schools are expected to produce the kinds of learning that students need to enter the world that awaits them. Student's academic score is accepted internationally as the indicator of quality of the system. However, student's performance is influenced by an array of endogenous as well as exogenous factors. To ensure that children reach their full potential, it is important for educational systems to provide appropriate and equitable learning opportunities to students from all backgrounds. There must be some type of controlling mechanism intertwined with professional management for ensuring the quality of the system. This paper is an integral part of the doctoral dissertation – ‘A study of Management Practices of Secondary Schools'. The principal objective of the study is to find out the relevance of the exogenous factors to the type of school management. A sample of 188 secondary schools – about 34% of the population in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh in India, was selected through stratified sampling technique. The primary data was collected through self designed questionnaire and interview schedules. The findings reveal a strong association between the type of school and the exogenous factors. Schools under public sector and aided managements are absorbing great impact while a majority of the schools run by unaided managements are not relevant to this phenomenon