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Principal leadership issues are becoming increasingly debated and explored in international and comparative contexts due to the changing context of educational provision. In the South African education context and the world over, there is unprecedented interest in how school leadership influences the performance of learners. Teaching and learning environments in schools have become more complex and diverse, where effective principalship is required to achieve high standards of educational success. The quality of leadership in schools is the cornerstone for driving transformational change that is required in schools. In this article, we argue that principals need to adopt leadership styles that would enhance the culture of teaching and learning. It was the goal of our qualitative study to explore the role of school principals in improving learning outcomes. Six schools in the North-West province, South Africa, were purposively selected to participate in this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with principals and teachers from the selected schools. We found that principals use several leadership styles to enhance the culture of teaching and learning in their schools. The study concluded that leadership in schools plays a significant role in improving learner performance.

The social representations of school performance have proven to be very diverse, and vary according to the aspirations of the stakeholders involved, the position they occupy in the system and the issues attached to it. In Morocco, there are multiple stakeholders in the public education system (The ministry of education and its decentralized services, teacher unions, the civil society, parents, students, etc.), and each of them has a specific mission which is in dynamic complementation with the other stakeholders in the system. The school principal remains the local actor par excellence. He occupies a decisive position in the functioning of the school. This position, which involves critical decision making, is where the execution of educational policies is exercised and where the aspirations of the different stakeholders are expressed. This paper aims at questioning how school principals perceive the \"performance of their schools\". In other words, it enquires on the signification (meaning) that these school leaders give to the performance of a school. To respond to this inquiry, data is collected using a questionnaire, which is administered to 40 different schools in the region of Guelmim Oued Noun.