The instructional leadership roles of the secondary school principal towards quality school improvement in Zimbabwean schools

The overall performance of secondary schools in Zimbabwe has been of grave concern to all stakeholders in education. Several reasons for this downward trend have been proffered but perhaps without getting to the bottom of the problem. Poor student achievement at ordinary level (O-level) in most schools, including schools that seem to have adequate facilities and qualified teachers, is experienced every year. The purpose of the study was to examine and explore the instructional leadership roles of the secondary school principal towards quality school improvement in Zimbabwean schools with specific reference to Harare and Mashonaland East provinces. The research methodology that was employed was the qualitative design drawing from case and ethnographic studies to collect data from the participants. A total of ten secondary schools, their heads, and fifty teachers from the same selected schools took part in the study. While parents were not directly involved in the study, the few that l came across during visits to schools were asked for their views as seen appropriate. The research instruments that were used included qualitative document analysis, interviews and qualitative observations. Each of the ten secondary schools was visited at least eight times for the purposes of collecting and verifying data. While field notes were made during visits, an audio tape was used during interviews in order to capture what was said word for word. The results indicate that for effective instructional leadership that improve quality of schools, heads needed to exercise both instructional and managerial roles effectively. However, the findings of the study indicated that heads tended to concentrate on managerial roles and performed instructional roles indirectly although these have a direct focus on quality school improvement. School principals in the study spent a lot of their time outside the school attending meetings called for by District and Provincial Education officials and other activities that did not seem to directly impact on quality school improvement. Instructional leadership is about spending a lot of time with teachers and students in the school and in particular in classrooms, among other things. As a result, teachers in the study lacked motivation and greatly missed opportunities to be assisted by the ‘’head teacher’’ which would translate to teacher growth and development and ultimately, school improvement. Instructional leadership was relegated to heads of departments. Heads attributed their failure to perform instructional tasks to lack of appropriate interventions to improve their leadership roles, too many meetings and too much paper work which they felt needed to be reduced so that they could be able to focus on instructional leadership tasks.Educational Leadership and ManagementD. Ed. (Education Management

Assessment of the impact of pit latrines on groundwater contamination in Hopley Settlement, Harare, Zimbabwe.

It is estimated that proximately 1.77 billion people around the world use some form of pit latrines as their primary means of sanitation. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target of improved sanitation by 2015. Only 66% of the world’s population has access to improved sanitation far below the MDG target of 75% by year 2015. Hopley is a settlement in Harare that was established in 2005 and had an estimated population of 15 000 by 2012. Due to many reasons the responsible local authority (City of Harare) has failed to cope with Hopley’s infrastructural development needs including that for water and sanitation. As a result many developments including Hopley Settlement have been occupied without adequate water and sanitation infrastructure. Many of the residence have resorted to shallow underground water mainly from wells and a few boreholes. Poor water and sanitation status is believed to have resulted in the 2008-2009 cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe, which resulted in 4300 deaths. Therefore, this study sought to assess the impact of pit latrines on groundwater quality in Hopley Settlement. A supervised landuse classification of Landsat images was performed to determine landuse changes and pit latrine density in Hopley Settlement using Geographical Information Techniques (GIS) techniques. Grab sampling was performed for groundwater source quality during the period of February to April 2015 in four sampling campaigns from 11 sampling sites comprising of 3 boreholes and 8 wells. The parameters that were studied included Electrical Conductivity (EC), pH, turbidity, nitrates, chlorides, ammonia, Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and Faecal Coliforms (FC). Student t-test was performed using groundwater quality data of 44 groundwater samples from 11 sampling locations in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software (v 16) to determine groundwater suitability for drinking by comparing mean values of analysed groundwater parameters with guidelines/standards to check if there was any significant difference. The Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) technique was used in a GIS environment to estimate the spatial distribution of the groundwater contaminants in the environment. Five disturbed soil samples in the vicinity of pit latrines and groundwater sources were collected at a depth of 1.5 m for permeability tests. Out of the 4 km2 forming the study area, there was a 250 % growth in built up area from 1 km2 in year 2000 to 3.5 km2 in the year 2014. FC counts in groundwater sources increased with increase in pit latrine density, while nitrates, ammonia and chlorides showed a decrease in groundwater concentration. About 250 inhabitants of Hopley Settlement occupied a space of 0.014 km2 translating to 4286 persons/km2. There was an increase in the strength of the relationship between pit latrine density and groundwater contamination by faecal coliforms as the radius increased from 15 m to 100 m i.e. r (42) = 0.425, p 100 cfu/100 mL were generally located to the north and west in Hopley Settlement (i.e. groundwater source W1, W2, W6 were 240 cfu/100 mL, 153 cfu/100 mL and 155 cfu/100 mL respectively). The soil indicated low permeability coefficient values that ranged from 2.3 × 10-6 m/s to 8.0 × 10-7 m/s. The results showed that groundwater source locations to the north and west in Hopley Settlement had FC counts >100 cfu/100 mL indicating a high chance of pathogenic contamination. Based on pathogen survival time in soil, the results generally suggested that the low soil permeability coefficients allowed for the attenuation of pathogens in soil before reaching groundwater sources. There was also a significant positive relationship between groundwater level depth from the surface and groundwater pollution i.e. r (18) = 0.764, p < 0.05 (chlorides), r (18) = 0.831, p < 0.05 (EC) and r (18) = 0.838, p < 0.05 (turbidity); while DO showed an inverse relationship, r (18) = − 0.486, p < 0.05. Nitrates, pH, ammonia and FC showed no relationship with water level depth from the ground surface. Nitrate levels posed a threat to human health. Raised and lined pit latrines and other low cost technologies should be considered to minimize the potential of groundwater pollution.,WaterNe