Who Lead the School? The Influence of State Politics in School Leadership, Ethiopia

Purpose- The purpose of this paper is to investigate nature of school leadership and the influence of politics in the public schools leadership process. Design/methods/approach- Qualitative case study research design was used. In this research 24 teaches and 10 principals public secondary schools were purposefully selected. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to collect data from participants. Data analysis was done concurrently with the data collection process. Cods, categories and themes were extracted from the data and analysed. Findings- Teachers’ one- to-five group, education development/change army and school command post committees together were the core structure in school management and leadership activities. Principals were focus on coordinating and developing an ‘educational army’ in the school. The school principal has no mandate to make any decisions alone as it can be negated by the command post. Originality/value- This research is one of the first empirical studies on the issue of political interference of the government in the school leadership. The study also the first to submitted for publication in international referred journals. The study findings are valuable for the theoretical development of school leadership and lessons will take for similar context. Keywords- school leadership, command post, education development army, one-five group, principal, teacher, stet politics. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-25-03 Publication date:September 30th 202