PRINCIPALS CHANGES AS THE MAIN FACTORS TO EMBODY EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS IN PUBLIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

Education as one of the main sustain Economic growth in Indonesia must be effectively built competitive human resources and better social capital. Effective education strategies of the government of Indonesia as the developing country should be able to accelerate its economic growth in the future. One of them is creating Effective schools. Effective schools can influence the school development and its learning outcomes, as well as its Leaders or principles who must be ones who could influence others to be motivated, cooperative, and do things effectively. This study set out to explore and describe principals’ changes as the main factors to embody effective schools in public senior high schools. This study was conducted by using quantitative method i.e. cross-sectional survey design. The findings indicated that there was a significant correlation between school principals’ leadership, attitude, and organization climate towards an effective secondary school. Meanwhile, the correlation between cooperation and integrity towards an effective secondary school did not be significant. The finding also showed that change management, principals' behaviour, harmonious cooperation, and the community integrity have significant contribution partially and simultaneously to an effective secondary school. In the other hand, principals’ leadership ability and school climate have low contribution to an effective school. Therefore, an effective school could be determined, one of them, through its principles who are leading and well managing school`s organization climate, having good behavior, performing good cooperation, and blending naturally in the environment in order to be able to serve a good quality of learning, student learning outcomes in specific, and improving human and economic quality of the country in general. The paper then serves ground criteria in selecting a school`s principal to embody an effective school.
Keywords: attitude, effective school, leadership