- Principals should resolve professional disagreements through direct dialogue and collaboration rather than rivalry, tribal mobilisation or incitement.
- Rivalry among school leaders has been shown to fracture staff loyalty, divide parents and communities, and ultimately harm learners.
- Education authorities have been called upon to promote transparent promotion, deployment and resource-allocation processes to reduce suspicion and favouritism among principals.
A school can survive inadequate buildings, limited resources and even disappointing examination results for a season. What it cannot afford is a leadership culture consumed by rivalry, tribalism and incitement. When principals who should be uniting teachers, protecting learners and strengthening institutions instead turn against one another, the damage can spread far beyond the head’s office.
The most dangerous school conflict is not always the one that begins with a loud confrontation. It can start quietly, with jealousy over recognition, competition for promotion, resentment over resources, disagreements over leadership styles or suspicion over another principal’s growing influence. Left unchecked, these tensions can harden into factions, pull teachers and parents into opposing camps and, in the worst cases, acquire a tribal or ethnic character. At that point, what began as a professional disagreement ceases to be about education; it becomes a contest for power, loyalty and influence. A principal’s responsibility is not to defeat another principal but to build an institution, not to mobilise teachers against colleagues but to unite them around learners, and not to exploit tribal loyalties but to demonstrate that competence, fairness and integrity must rise above ethnic identity. The principal who turns a professional disagreement into a personal, tribal or factional war may win temporary allies, but the school loses, and when the school loses, learners pay the price.
Healthy competition has a legitimate place in education. It can inspire better academic performance, stronger discipline, innovation, improved infrastructure and more effective learner support. Competition becomes toxic, however, when another school’s success is treated as a threat, another principal’s promotion as an insult, or another community’s presence as a reason for mobilisation. Recognition is one of the common triggers: a school that performs exceptionally in examinations, excels in sports, expands infrastructure or attracts growing enrolment naturally receives attention, and its principal may earn praise from parents, alumni and education officials. Such success should provide lessons for other institutions, but professional jealousy can instead turn achievement into a source of resentment.
Promotion can sharpen the competition, since senior leadership opportunities are limited while ambitious professionals naturally seek career progression. When colleagues believe they are competing for the same opportunities, rumours and suspicion can replace professional goodwill, and a colleague’s appointment may be perceived as one’s own defeat rather than as an achievement for the education system. School comparisons add further pressure, as parents and communities regularly judge institutions by examination results, discipline, enrolment, facilities and co-curricular achievements, a dynamic amplified by social media.
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Principals can consequently become more concerned with overtaking neighbouring schools than with measuring genuine institutional progress. Leadership styles can also produce friction: some principals prefer consultation and delegation while others favour firm central control, and neither approach automatically makes a leader better; problems emerge when differences in management philosophy become personal attacks on competence, integrity or character.
Ego can quietly transform professional confidence into destructive rivalry. A principal who has transformed a struggling institution has every reason to be proud, but leadership demands humility, and the ability to acknowledge another leader’s achievement is evidence of professional maturity rather than weakness. Resources provide another potential fault line, since teachers, classrooms, laboratories, learning materials, technology and development funds are not always distributed in ways that satisfy every institution, and perceived inequalities can produce resentment, particularly around staffing decisions involving teacher numbers, transfers and deployment of experienced personnel. Community influence can deepen these tensions too, since schools have strong relationships with parents, alumni, local leaders and community organisations, and a principal with substantial community support may become influential. The danger comes when institutional leadership becomes a contest for personal networks, prestige or political influence.
Then comes the most dangerous escalation: tribalism. A disagreement that should remain professional can acquire an ethnic character when principals, teachers, parents or community members begin mobilising support along tribal lines, shifting the central question from “what is right for the school?” to “whose side are you on?” Once identity replaces evidence and policy, professional judgment is compromised. Teachers may begin forming informal camps around perceived ethnic loyalties, parents may interpret administrative disagreements as attacks on their community, and a principal may receive support because people identify with his or her background rather than because they agree with the substance of a dispute. This is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of education: schools should teach young people that competence, integrity, fairness and hard work matter more than ancestry, and when adults in authority resort to ethnic mobilisation, they undermine the very values learners are expected to embrace. Kenya’s diversity should enrich its schools, not become ammunition in leadership disputes.
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The situation becomes even more dangerous when rivalry turns into incitement. Inflammatory language, unverified accusations, deliberate provocation and mobilisation of staff or communities against another leader can transform a manageable disagreement into an institutional confrontation. Incitement does not always begin with an explicit call for confrontation; it can emerge through repeated insinuations, character attacks, inflammatory public statements, ethnic appeals or the deliberate circulation of unestablished allegations. School principals carry a special responsibility here, since their words carry authority, and a statement made by a school leader can easily be interpreted by teachers, parents or students as a signal to take sides. A principal should therefore never use the authority of office to turn disagreement into a campaign against another person, institution or community.
The consequences of destructive rivalry extend far beyond the principals involved. Teachers can be drawn into factions, staff morale can decline, professional cooperation can collapse, parents can become divided, community relationships can deteriorate, joint educational programmes can suffer, and learners may eventually absorb the hostility surrounding them. A school cannot effectively teach teamwork while its leadership demonstrates division.
The solution begins with putting learners at the centre. Whenever principals disagree, they should ask one fundamental question: will this dispute improve or undermine the interests of learners? That question can distinguish legitimate institutional concerns from personal battles. Open communication is equally important; difficult issues should be addressed directly between professionals rather than channelled through teachers, parents or community networks, and regular forums for school leaders can provide opportunities to resolve misunderstandings before they become entrenched. Professional disagreement must also be separated from personal hostility, since a principal can challenge a colleague’s decision without attacking the colleague, and firmness does not require humiliation.
Collaboration can be one of the strongest antidotes to rivalry. Principals can jointly organise academic programmes, teacher development, mentorship initiatives, sports activities, environmental projects and community programmes, creating opportunities for leaders to recognise one another’s strengths and discover common interests. Competition itself must be recalibrated: if one school achieves excellent examination results, introduces an effective discipline system or develops an innovative learning programme, neighbouring institutions should ask what they can learn, since excellence should become a benchmark, not a provocation. The right question is how to become better, not how to bring another institution down.
Education authorities also have a responsibility to reduce the conditions that breed suspicion. Transparent processes for promotion, deployment and resource allocation can minimise rumours and perceptions of favouritism, and clear communication about administrative decisions is essential. Where disputes arise over staffing, resources or institutional responsibilities, principals should use established professional channels rather than personal, political or tribal networks, and where a conflict becomes entrenched, early mediation by an impartial education official or respected professional can prevent it from spreading. Emotional intelligence is equally important, since principals must be able to listen, accept criticism, acknowledge mistakes and control emotions under pressure. Authority should provide direction and stability, not fear and division. Teachers should never become soldiers in a principal’s personal battle, pressured to choose sides, spread allegations or participate in campaigns against colleagues, and parents and community leaders should likewise support the stability of institutions rather than personality-driven factions.
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Ultimately, principals must redefine what constitutes success. The strongest principal is not necessarily the one who defeats every competitor, attracts the most praise or dominates the local education landscape; it is the leader who builds a strong institution, develops teachers, protects learners, embraces innovation and leaves the school better than it was found. Leadership positions are temporary, but institutions endure, and the culture created during a tenure can influence generations of teachers and learners. Kenya therefore needs school leaders who can compete without becoming enemies, disagree without becoming hostile and succeed without resenting the success of others, competing through better teaching, stronger learner support, innovation, discipline, technology, infrastructure and responsible management, not through character assassination, tribal mobilisation or incitement.
Another principal’s success does not diminish one’s own, and another school’s excellence should challenge institutions to improve rather than tempt them to undermine it. A colleague’s tribe should never determine whether that colleague deserves fairness, respect or professional cooperation. The school must be bigger than the principal, the learner bigger than the faction, and professionalism stronger than tribal loyalty. The ultimate test of educational leadership is not who won the rivalry, but whether learners received a better education, teachers became better professionals and the institution became stronger. Less rivalry, less ego, less tribal mobilisation, less incitement, and more professionalism, collaboration, fairness and service: that is the leadership culture Kenya’s schools deserve.
By Hillary Muhalya
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