Across Kenya’s education system, a quiet but corrosive transformation is taking place—one that rarely makes headlines yet steadily erodes the quality of learning in our schools. Head teachers and principals, once respected as instructional leaders and academic anchors, are increasingly being reduced to accountants, procurement officers, compliance clerks, and messengers of bureaucracy. The classroom, which should be their primary arena of influence, has been replaced by offices stacked with files, receipts, audit queries, and online returns. The cost of this shift is immense, and it is being paid daily by teachers and learners.
At its heart, a school exists for one purpose: learning. Everything else—finance, administration, infrastructure, reporting—is meant to support that core mission. Instructional leadership is therefore the lifeblood of effective schooling. It involves guiding teaching practice, supervising curriculum delivery, mentoring teachers, monitoring learner progress, and shaping a strong academic culture. When school heads are actively involved in these processes, schools thrive. When they are distracted or absent, schools drift.
Yet today, many school heads rarely enter classrooms except during emergencies or ceremonial occasions. Their schedules are consumed by financial management demands, procurement procedures, audit compliance, data submissions, meetings, and circulars from multiple agencies. What was meant to be supportive oversight has hardened into suffocating micromanagement. The result is a distorted leadership role in which the head teacher’s success is judged more by clean audit reports than by the quality of teaching and learning.
This is not merely an administrative inconvenience; it is a systemic failure.
The irony is striking. No spreadsheet has ever taught a child to read. No payment voucher has ever improved numeracy. No procurement form has ever inspired curiosity or creativity. Yet instructional supervision—the very activity that determines what happens between a teacher and a learner—is increasingly treated as optional, something to be done if time allows. In reality, time never allows, because the system has been designed to ensure it does not.
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Teachers feel the consequences immediately. Without strong instructional leadership, teaching becomes an isolated activity. New teachers struggle without mentorship. Experienced teachers stagnate without professional challenge. Weak teaching practices go uncorrected, while innovative ones go unnoticed and unsupported. Professional dialogue fades, replaced by routine and survival. When a school head is absent from the academic life of the school, teachers lose their most important source of guidance and motivation.
Teaching is not a mechanical process; it requires reflection, feedback, and growth. Teachers need leaders who understand pedagogy, curriculum progression, assessment strategies, and learner psychology. They need heads who can observe lessons meaningfully, offer constructive feedback, coordinate curriculum coverage, and align assessment with learning objectives. When school heads are overwhelmed by administrative tasks, this instructional support disappears, leaving teachers professionally exposed.
Learners, though often silent, bear the heaviest burden. They may not understand vote heads, procurement thresholds, or audit timelines, but they feel the impact of weak instructional leadership in subtle yet lasting ways. Inconsistent teaching, shallow assessments, poor feedback, and learning gaps slowly accumulate. By the time examination results or national assessments reveal the damage, the learning loss is already entrenched.
This challenge is even more acute under the Competency-Based Education framework. CBE demands close monitoring of learner progress, continuous assessment, individualized support, and strong coordination across learning areas. It requires school heads who are deeply engaged in curriculum implementation, assessment moderation, and instructional coherence. When leadership is reduced to paperwork management, CBE risks becoming a box-ticking exercise rather than a meaningful transformation of learning.
One of the most dangerous misconceptions fueling this crisis is the belief that financial accountability is the highest form of school accountability. While responsible use of public funds is essential, it must never eclipse educational accountability. A school can pass every audit and still fail its learners. Clean books do not guarantee quality teaching. Balanced accounts do not ensure that children can read fluently, think critically, or apply skills creatively.
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We have, in effect, inverted priorities. Instead of finance serving education, education is now subordinated to finance. School heads are evaluated, praised, or punished primarily on their compliance with financial and administrative requirements, not on their effectiveness as instructional leaders. This sends a damaging message: that what matters most is not what happens in the classroom, but what appears in reports.
This situation did not arise by accident. It is the product of policy choices rooted in mistrust and over-centralization. Rather than strengthening external oversight mechanisms, the system has transferred administrative burdens directly to schools. Instead of empowering school heads as professional educators, it has treated them as potential risks to be controlled through layers of regulation and reporting. The unintended consequence is leadership paralysis.
School heads now operate in a climate of fear—fear of audit queries, fear of misinterpretation of circulars, fear of procedural mistakes. In such an environment, innovation dies. Risk-taking in teaching is discouraged. The safest option becomes rigid compliance, even when it undermines learning. The head teacher becomes a defensive administrator rather than a visionary leader.
The emotional toll on school leaders is significant. Many entered the profession driven by a passion for teaching and mentorship. Today, they find themselves buried in administrative routines that leave little room for professional fulfillment. Burnout among school heads is rising, yet rarely discussed. When leaders are exhausted and disillusioned, their capacity to inspire others diminishes.
What makes this crisis particularly tragic is that it is entirely avoidable.
The first step toward reform is clarity of roles. The Ministry of Education must reclaim its core mandate: policy formulation, standard setting, and quality assurance. Micromanagement of schools through endless directives undermines professionalism and efficiency. Schools need clear frameworks, not constant interference.
Second, financial and procurement systems must be simplified and, where possible, partially centralized. This does not mean removing accountability, but redesigning processes so that school heads are not consumed by technical financial tasks that can be handled more efficiently elsewhere. Accountability should be smart, not suffocating.
Third, instructional leadership must be structurally protected. Time for classroom observation, teacher mentoring, curriculum supervision, and academic review should be formally recognized and safeguarded. It should not depend on the goodwill or stamina of individual school heads, but be embedded in the system.
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Fourth, training and appraisal of school leaders must be rebalanced. While financial management skills are important, they should not dominate leadership preparation. Head teachers are first and foremost educators. Their effectiveness should be measured by learning outcomes, teaching quality, and school culture—not merely by administrative compliance.
Finally, trust must be restored. An education system that does not trust its school leaders cannot succeed. Professional trust does not mean absence of oversight; it means recognizing expertise, allowing discretion, and holding leaders accountable for what truly matters: learning.
Schools do not fail because head teachers cannot manage money. They fail when leadership is disconnected from teaching and learning. If we continue down the current path, we risk creating schools that are administratively impressive but educationally hollow—institutions that look efficient on paper yet leave learners ill-prepared for life.
The question we must confront is simple but uncomfortable: do we want school heads who manage accounts, or leaders who shape minds? The answer will determine not only the future of school leadership, but the future of education itself.
To restore the soul of our schools, we must return school heads to their rightful place—not behind desks buried in files, but in classrooms, guiding teachers, nurturing learners, and leading learning with purpose and vision.
By Hillary Muhalya
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