The Role of Principal in Improvement of School Performance: A Qualitative Study in Community School of Nepal

This study aims to explore the role of the principal's leadership in the improvement of school performance in community schools and to identify the major challenges faced by principals of community schools while improving school performance. A qualitative approach and phenomenology research design was used in this study. Interview and Focus Group Discussions schedule were used to collect data from the field, 5 principals were the respondents for interview and 20 principals of different community schools were involved in focused group. The data were analyzed using qualitative data management software Atlas ti. The determination and taking self-initiative is a crucial role for community school principals to maintain school enrollments, education quality, and collecting funds for school performance. Principals have adopted several noticeable strategies to increase education quality. Some of the ways and means adopted by the successful schools are maintaining constant discipline in school encouraging students and teachers by rewards and appreciation, consistent observing and supervision of class conduction, student attendance and teacher‟s consistency, coaching classes for feeble and interested students, parent-teacher communication, contests and competitions between the cluster and individual. Every principal faces some of the biggest frustrations to control student behavior, recruiting teachers and cooperation between staff, promote personalized learning, improve the teaching and learning environment, student retention, and parents' support in the improvement of the school. The study further recommended that principals and teachers should be given sufficient training to improve the school's performance.


Introduction
The principals' role is an important variable for the education standard or quality of education; excellent schools have leaders who definitely influence their participants resulting in high level of students" accomplishment. With respect to the scenario Iqbal (2004) the quality of education being imparted in education institutions are at various stages is far from the satisfactory level. One of the reasons for low performing of the system in this respect is an incompetent administrative infrastructure, lack of guidance as well as ineffective communication system in the nation. Heads of educational institutes, both at school and college levels are not qualified in educational leadership affairs. Education system heads are employed due to their political powers instead of skills and qualities required to develop a favorable learning environment for better teaching and learning within the institutions. Every schools needs powerful or effective principal willing to foster high level of students" achievement and effective organizational climate of their schools. The principal is the high authority in the school. Thus, responsibility of running the school is of the principal (Freiberg, 1999).
Nepal is a developing nation of South Asia. Following the reestablishment of democracy in 1990, Nepal has mostly prioritized on educational investments as a crucial means of converting society (Carney and Bista, 2009). Since then, significantly measureable growth in education has been seen. For e.g. the number of students has been significantly increased and positive effective on institutions also has been seen regarding education quality. However, despite the significant quantitative growth, worries over the poor quality of education have been increasing in modern ages (Bhatta, 2008;Thapa, 2012). The Nepalese government"s three-year interim plan for 2013-2015 clearly acknowledged school dropout and class recurrence in all grades. The major reasons in the decrement of students are as cited in National Planning Commission NPC (2013); poor pass rate, lack in the timely teacher's professional development and absence of both teachers and students. Likewise, Bhatta (2008) in Tackling the Problems of Quality and Disparity in Nepal"s School Education: The OLPC Model mentioned these two causes; 'poor quality of public education' and 'the inequality in access to quality education' as the major problems. In the same way, Carney and Bista (2009) and Mathema (2007) also have argued on the similar issues. According to them, because of the above mentioned reasons, the public have been keenly attracted towards private school rather than the public ones.
Supporting the quality of education or education standards, Khanal (2018) argues, "School principal leadership plays a significant role in school success, through its effects on teachers' perception, attitudes, and behaviors" (p.51). In the same way, to create difference performance of improvement in a school the principal's role plays as a key tool (Anderson, 2008). As each and every principal is a key agent in a school, they should play a key role in the adoption of strategically well trained staff management. It is believed that, principal is a team leader in assuring that staff is strongly dedicated to the understanding of school's goals (Moindi et al., 2016). According to Mahlangu (2014); Mestry (2017) and Tucker and Codding (2002) principals in the 21st century have to execute multi-faceted roles, in order to achieve the targeted goals that the schools have expected. Several research studies emphasize the importance of principals taking on strong leadership in establishing the well-equipped schools. Principals usually perform three compatible roles of; manager, leader and administrator at school level. As managers, they focus on managing and monitoring human, physical, and financial resources. As leaders, they drive the vision of the school and focus on organizational development and school improvement, while as administrators; they deal with day-today operational matters, and continuously modification between leadership and management functions. Recognized as the leader of the school principal is expected to continually facilitate student success and school improvement. One such way principals can lead school improvement is through building supportive, believing relationships with teachers (Sowell, 2018).
The principal is expected to connect this team cooperation on a continuous basis through team working and teambuilding skills such as sharing the organizational vision and direction, regular review of presentation, acknowledgment and reward of accomplishment, and by getting and providing feedback (Moindi et al., 2016). In a school set up, the principal is expected to recruit a participating methodology during the implementation of intentional administration. The participating policy is usually validated through team work during the improvement of school intentional plans. This study aims to find out the role of principal in improvement of school performance.
The role of the principal in a public school is impacted by lack of resources, multi-faceted responsibilities, and expectations of a maintaining a high-profile role within the community (Preston and Barnes, 2017). Principals are challenged with fiscal limitations, limited access to educational and programmatic resources, and limited infrastructure, yet are held to the same accountability measures as their peers in urban and suburban schools (Preston et al., 2018). Rural principals face socio cultural challenges unique to their school community to identify the challenges for rural school leaders as lack of employment opportunities for families in the community, geographic isolation, migration of people from the community, and lower levels of educational credentials (Preston et al., 2018). Despite going through such challenges also the principals in the schools or colleges have innumerous responsibilities. Hence, the principals need to be multidimensional.
School principal has critical role to play in helping to change and satisfy the state employment necessity and economic mandate. Thus, the principal requires thinking quicker, work smarter, dream wider and relating to each other in very dissimilar ways to handle the tendencies of modification occurring in the world (Levine et al., 1995). Furthermore, the authors explained that "the leaders of tomorrow will have to establish a real vision and a sense of values for the organization they wish to lead" (p.2). The role of the principal in facilitating modification in teaching and learning has developed as one of the fascinating study areas. However, there is no such a study made in our country and little has been said about this issue in other developing countries like Nepal.
Principal can influence the behavior and academic outcomes of the students effectively rather than other teachers and staff because he or she is the guideline of the school, role model, director of educational institution and manager of manpower in a school. The principal of the school is torch bearer of the values and activities of his/her institution. We can emphasize that each and every school has its own learning environment and pace of learning as well. In every school system, the interaction between the principal and the teachers adopt or contribute to a large amount in developing the atmosphere or the climate of their schools to maintain the educational ethics, values and norms of the school. This learning environment affects the behavior of the individuals living and working in the environment which affects their performance and fulfillment with their professions and it is also concerned with the students' future.
Moreover, Naidoo and Petersen (2015) debate that principals only become effective leaders to lead educational organizations when they participate teachers with more culturally relevant teaching stratagems and practices that result in upgraded student results. Finally, most education researchers believe that principals are responsible for setting the quality of the school, by providing effective instructional leadership and ensuring the professional management of schools. These are however, fundamentally numerous professions requiring different headship practices, skills, and functions (Booth et al., 2010;Tingle et al., 2019). The objectives of this study was to examine the role of principal in improvement of school performance and also identify the major challenges faced by them while improving the school performance. Followed by these questions: How does the principal's leadership role improve performance of community schools? And, what are the major challenges faced by principals of community schools in improving school's performance?

Review of Related Literature
In some belongings, a principal would fundamentally assist in the same competency as an official. Over the course of the past 100 years, school buildings transformed from a teacher-leading-the-students institution, to a principal leading the teachers and students organization. Due to this reorganization of the school scenery, and the overview of a principal whose primary job responsibility was the administration of the teachers, schools saw the substitute of authority scraps as the principal became an enlightening manager in progressively complex school bureaucracy. Well into the twentieth century, expert disputes overwhelmed the fundamental principal ship. The principal recalled many of the roles and responsibilities of the head teacher with many job reports, teaching accountabilities, and low prestige. Basic/primary school principals were more likely than secondary school principals to teach classes, be twisted with direct coaching with children in the classroom, playground, lunch room, and in common and public service organizations. In addition, gender discrimination was existing in basic schools all over the nation.
Governance and administration of education in Nepal is chiefly assumed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology through numerous agencies under a highly centralized education structure where schools are managed by their principal and School Management Committees (SMCs). The Education Regulation, 2010, Rule 93(1) (6 th amendment) states "There shall be a headmaster/principal in each school to regulate as an academic and managerial main of the school" (Nepal Law Commission, 2002). The regulation recommends 31 different roles and duties for the principal. With reference to the six leadership dimensions for operational school leadership, three functions communicate to goal setting through preparation of the school"s yearly, half-yearly and monthly school plans and programs, two functions communicate to building school culture by continuing cooperation among teachers, pupils and paternities, and ensuring a respectful, moral and disciplined school environment, and two functions communicate to teacher support through choosing and mentioning teachers to the Education, Development and Coordination Unit (EDCU) for training programs, and allocating jobs and accountabilities to teachers and staff. Apart from the above declared, the majority of the functions indicated in the Regulation relate to routine management functions such as formulating reports, keeping records and reporting, and many directly complement the accountabilities of the (EDCU) and SMC. In short, the official expectations for principals place greater prominence on routine management functions than on leadership. The official responsibilities do not highlight the part of the principal in generating a vision, building community relationships, mobilizing properties, team building, encouraging cooperation, instructional planning and supervision, physical improvement, or scenery standards (Hope Nepal, 2005;Niraula, 2002). Nepal has recently presented policy reforms and programs in an attempt to increase the educational quality of its public schools by maximizing community participation in school management, which essentially necessitates leadership with vision and promise. However, the Education Regulation deliberates the school leader to be more "an administrator than the visionary leader" (CERID, 2004). Researchers have deliberated how the centralization of the education structure in Nepal subsidizes to a lack of independence and decision-making supremacy among community school principals (Mathema and Bista, 2006;Sharma, 2013). Although local communities became straight tangled in the school management procedure after the decentralization of education in the 1990s, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has reserved power over human resource management and development, development of curriculum and textbooks, financing and educational planning, departure principals and SMCs with little power over deliberately significant matters (Sharma, 2013).
The literature on school principal and administration is replete with example of how the character of today's school principal has drastically transformed from that of a manager to an instructional leader (Fink & Resnick, 2001;Hallinger & Heck, 1998, as cited in Barnett (2004). Davis et al. (2005) distinguished that the role of school principals has augmented to encompass an overwhelming array of professional tasks and competences that they did not have previous.
Among the new potentials and demands, according to Davis et al. (2005) school principals are estimated to be enlightening dreamers, instructional and curriculum principal, assessment specialists, disciplinarians, community originators, public relations/communications specialists, budget specialists, facility managers, special programs administrators, as well as guardians of numerous permissible, contractual, and policy mandates and initiatives. Similarly, The Institute for Educational Principal (2000) indicated that schools of the 21 st era need a new kind of school principal. This new sort of educational principal must be arranged to assist as principal to create learning environment for student. They are encouraged to know about teaching and learning, academic content, and pedagogical techniques which increases student's achievement.
School principals must have the capability to work with staffs and strengthen their skills, motivate towards the time on task and proficient development. School principals are also anticipated to encourage shared principal among educationalists, community partners and inhabitants, and they must demonstrated commitment to the conviction that all children will learn at high levels, and they must be able to stimulate others inside and outside the school building with the mission and goals of the schools (Institute for Educational Principal, 2000).
Arthur Levine (2005) stated that, "School principals are being so-called on to lead in the redesign of their schools and school systems" (p.12). In the performance level of the school and accountability driven period, school principals are anticipated to lead their schools in the reviewing of aims, significances, finances, staffing, curriculum, schoolings, learning resources, assessment methods, technology, and use of time on task. School principals are also expected to recruit and retain new and expert staffs to understand and to support ongoing transformation of school from lower to higher level. All these can only be accomplished if school principals are able to participate themselves in continuous evaluation and school improvement process towards the destination.
Foremost, Barth (2001) noted that principals also must be able to permit and encourage teachers to workout principal outdoor the classroom, select workbooks and instructional funds, design staff development programs, and estimate teacher performance among other responsibilities and functions (Barth, 2001). Today's principals must become the interpreters of new laws, program managers, instructional principal, and transformational principal considering that the demands of the job have changed so much that traditional methods of preparing school principals no longer furnish them to face the actualities of today's schools (Elmore, 1999). In other words, principals need to instantaneously use big-picture thinking and practical involvement strategies to move their school organizations in optimistic guidelines (Barnett, 2004).
Likewise Hunvitz (2002) indicate that the difficulty of leading is further complicated by the shifting the role of principal itself. Nowadays, the requirements of the capable principal is to combine the outdated site of administration with understanding instructional principal (Supovitz and Poglinco, 2001). They need the ability to keep a balance between solo actions and decision making with distributed management and shared principal. They need to foster a culture that is safe and supportive yet willing to take hazards and squeeze transformation (Bennett and Washington, 2002). The "job" of school principal has evolved into an overwhelming, hydra-like phenomenon that requires knowledge and skills that many school principals simply do not have (Grosso de Leon, 2006). They are overwhelmed by an astounding assortment of responsibilities and expectations without corresponding authority over basic issues such as hiring and firing, school budgets, curriculums, bonuses, and training (Grosso de Leon, 2006).
School principals' discovery themselves in new, more supportive roles so that they must progress to cuddle the quickly changing social, political, and financial surroundings of today's schools. In fact, as Tirozzi (2001) declares, school principals will require new skills for a shifting scenery. They must be the principal of transformation, for few school improvement initiatives flourish without support from the school principal (Barth, 2001). To achieve competencies and skills to understand the new roles of the school's principal capability should generate and establish an educational image, to involve all stakeholder in groups to identify the problems, exploring options, building consensus, and developing creative and innovative solutions to improve circumstances for students and their families to support educational performances (Bradshaw, 2000).
The encouragement of principal's leadership on learning, predominantly in high-impact schools, is a focus in this study. A 2005 Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) funded analysis of 35 years of studies on the impact of school principal's leadership on student academic achievement sketched attention to how real leadership adds worth to the classroom experience, both in teaching and learning. In their analysis, Robert et al. (2016) found that the caliber of principal's role in a school can and often does have a dramatic effect on students' accomplishment which may be brand to the school. Schools required principals who were dedicated to realizing a vision of success for all children and devoted to: developing a qualified, competent principal to run the school most effectively.
In the same way, Leithwood and Jantzi (2005) also informed that school leaders need to be such who could establish transformational leadership practices to draw the positive outcome in the organization. The transformational leadership practice has less of impact for the outcome is expected in the former. What they believe is; "The guidance on school performance, controlled by the quality of its pedagogy and the achievement of its students, is substantial." Likewise, Roberts (1985) stated that the cooperative actions in transforming principal's leadership affect in finances to those who participate in the preparation. Thus, maintaining quality of school education depends on the regularity of the principal as well.
Transformational leadership has been initiated associating with schools" contextual environment and its effect as well on students' academic accomplishment. Leithwood and Sun (2012), recommended that transformational leadership generates optimal chances for individual growth through motivation and that this ''optimistic influence of principal's abilities is much helpful to achieve better''. Ramalho et al. (2015), employed an experimental case-study design to examine principals who had succeeded to sustain a high level of student achievement in two innermost urban basic schools that primarily assisted low-income Hispanic children amongst the ages of six and ten. Citing current data on school accomplishment, researchers sought to study numerous factors contributing to or inhibiting improvement for these principals who were leading schools that flourished in meeting state and federal performance standards. The principals in the study were found to have "displayed astonishing promise to their schools and students by focusing on student achievement, building efficacy among faculty and staff; and cooperative and believing relationships" (p. 50).
However, Hallinger and Heck (1998) observed how cooperative school leadership subsidizes to school improvement. Specifically, they scanned longitudinal data from 198 primary schools during a four-year period in the U.S. that restrained teacher perceptions of leadership procedures within the school. The researchers determined that leadership has a small, but statistically significant effect on learning. They further found that the influence of leadership on the school enhancement process is highly contextualized. Similarly, Shatzer et al. (2014) associated transformational and instructional leadership theories, scanned the influence that school leaders have on student accomplishment, and strong minded which leadership practices were associated with increased student accomplishment.
School principals are noteworthy to school enlargement in order to motivate student learning and to growth quality in education and they are broadly renowned as the chief transformation mediator at all levels in a school system (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007;Fullan, 2006;Hallinger and Heck, 1998;Leithwood and Riehl, 2003;Leithwood et al., 2004). Much of the accessible literature on school principal usefulness requires that school principal play a central role by utilizing their encouragement directly and indirectly over frequent aspects throughout the school and its community in pursuit of promoted student learning (Hallinger and Heck, 1998;Leithwood et al., 2004). Most meaningfully, school principal" roles directly touch teacher capacity, inspiration, promise and working situations, all of which influence teaching practices linked to student learning and achievement (Leithwood et al., 2008). A much larger research base documents principals" effects on school operations through finding and pronouncing a vision and goals, developing high performance potentials, building collaborative culture, motivating and supporting teachers and students, encouragement communication, apportioning resources, and developing organizational assemblies to support instruction and learning (Hallinger and Heck, 1998;Knapp et al., 2006;Leithwood and Riehl, 2003). Leithwood and Jantzi (2005), debate that the most significant areas on which school principals can emphasize are: setting guidelines by developing an agreement around vision, goals and direction; assisting individual teachers through support, modelling and supervision, reformation the organization to foster partnership and involve families and community; and managing the organization by persistently allocating funds and support.
The Ontario Principal Framework (Leithwood, 2012) outlines five practices for effective school principal: setting guidelines; building connotations and developing people; developing the organization to support estimated practices; enlightening the instructional programs; and acquiring responsibility which can be imitate by the principals to be success.

Methodology
This research has taken a phenomenological methodology in that it has observed at how role of principal in improvement of school performance in community schools of Okhaldhunga district. This methodology, I consider, more suitable in what was enclosed as essentially a small scale, experimental study. It is unquestionably crucial to locate what we observe in schools and principals tell me about their practice in the setting of the views of noteworthy others. To support this view Ribbins (1995), whose investigation has dedicated on the leadership of the principal, has recommended that such research can be contextualized in the basis of three methodological standpoints. I have grasped these perspectives for my study as follows: a situated perspective which gives access to the opinions of individual principal across a demonstrative range of issues and events; a contextualized perspective which discovers the views and actions of principal in improvement of school performance. A contextualized perspective in action which proceeds as its preliminary point the actions of the principal and which also incorporates the two previous perspectives. The third perspective, Ribbins energies on to debate, requires a five phase approach collecting relevant documented proof about the work of the principal at all levels, observing the principal as s/he goes about the everyday routine of the job, reflecting with the principal on what is going on in school to improvement and why that activities is there alternate for the action or not, provoking the views of noteworthy others role that make the better synthesizing the proof to produce an article of principal in a sole setting.
The research has concentrated on, in total, 5 principals of Okhaldhunga district including Chishankhugadhi Rural Municipality. Five principals of community school were interviewed initially and later the research findings were presented to a focus group of a further 20 principals. These schools are located in rural areas drawing from diverse catchment areas. They were nominated as an operational sample because the some school had already established working relationships with other community school as successful partnerships. In turn, they encouraged principals to join but no pressure was given on anyone to be involved. Five principals followed for between half a day and a full day in their school condition with ongoing conversation of the tasks that they were involved in. This data was engraved up as a series of case studies which were then analyzed for proof to contribute to our study plan. In a sequence of structured interviews, I reflected with these principals on the case studies and searched. The time provision the principal have to lead and manage their school. The sense of empowerment felt by principal of school. The initiatives for improving teaching, learning and accomplishment in school.
There are difficulties in improving teaching, learning and achievement of the school. Finally, I interviewed five principals on the role principal in facilitating school improvement and the establishment of points of correlation with their activities. The interviews delivered me with data on the leading role of the principal in improvement of the school, the way conclusions I made in the department and the relationships between the principal and teacher to manage the staff. This acceptable us to synthesize the proof to produce an article of the role of principal to make the school better.
To comprehensive this phase of my study, I also presented my findings to a focus group of 20 principals of secondary schools from Okhaldhunga district including Chishankhugadhi Rural Municipality. The goal of this research was to find out the role of principal in improvement of school performance from observation and interview data in contradiction of the views of another large group of principal who was out of the nominee for research. Focus groups (Morgan and Spanish, 1984) was carefully prearranged and organized but should also be adequately stretchy to facilitate discussion among the participants. After a preliminary presentation focusing on the key matters developing from the research, the participants were asked to deliberate and report back on their responses to those issues and the changing role of principal. An investigation of these deliberations is also encompassed in this article.
This unit attractions on data from the interviews with five principals. The principals were each asked to recognize a key challenges, and to categorize the culture of the school principal of the school. Some interactions with the shareholder were also accompanied as focus group. The focus group discussions were apprehended with school teachers, SMC members, parents. The purpose of the focus group was to discovered current role of the principals on improvement of school performance. Some quantitative measures were also assimilated to complement the focus group discussion and interviews with the principals and other shareholders. Sampling of schools were prioritized based on schools previously tasted for longitudinal study. Some of the better accomplishment schools were nominated from the second phase study and some new good schools were nominated upon commendation by the EDCU. Data gathering complicated both interview and observation with the principals, SMC members, school teachers and the parents. Contacts with the following were accompanied in the form of interviews and focus group discussions.

Focused Group Discussion
-Five school SMCs and PTAs -Regarding the principal"s concern over the contributing factors for the effective leadership of the principals for the improvement of the school. Interviews -Twenty principals as -Regarding the roles and activities of the principals for the better management of the school, including team spirit, discipline maintenance and decision making process of the principal.
One-shot study is normally felt to be unsuitable to sufficiently reflect upon the concerns and issues of school improvement. A comprehensive, phenomenology, a case study design would have been most appropriate for this kind of study. Although the study has been accompanied on a short period of time during Corona Pandemic , the focus of the study has moved from input variables to outcome variables as it developed. Selection of variables and focus of the study has shadowed an incremental process which consequently addressed matters and anxieties raised by earlier researches concern with regard to access, quality, and management of school.
For this study, five schools having better accomplishment (based on the previous study and as reported by the EDCU from Okhldhunga district) were selected. Of the five schools, 3 were from secondary, 1 was from lower secondary and 1 was from primary. The target schools for the data collection were as following: Principals, school teachers, SMC members, parents, students constituted the major data foundation for this research. The data were collected by observation and interviews with the principals. The principal's role was assessed in terms of access, educational quality and school management of the school. Some other information gathered includes the principal's profile, time management, decision-making process, consistency, relationship with student"s parents and community members, and other school interconnected activities. Focus group discussion and pod group communications were made with SMCs, parents, school teachers, principals and students. With the permission of the participants, discussions and their reflections were recorded and transcribed into the report. The detailed discussion of each school and the concerns of the shareholders are captured in this report.
Principal's profile containing qualification, professional experience, and training and workshops held, seminars appeared, awards and medals accepted, articles, books, publications and membership in numerous organizations was analyzed. Principal's time management consisted of time distribution for teaching the class, meeting with school teachers, students, parents, SMCs, administrative works, and participation in different organizations inside the community activities. Under executive process, the principal's methodology to reach in any decision was studied. For the purpose, the minting was also imitative from the school's minute book. The principal's and schoolteacher"s regularity were attained from the teacher's attendance register of the school. The FGD was held with the parents and SMCs concerning the principals' affiliation with them. I studied the principal's school connected activities from the display of information connected to school performance, discussions with school teachers, SMCs and parents. Direct observation of daily activities of the principals and some of the pictures displayed in the principal's room were observed. The school teachers were asked regarding the roles and activities of the principals for the improved organization of the school, including team soul, discipline maintenance and decision making process of the principals in the school. The FGD was made with the SMCs regarding their concern on the contributing factors of the effective leadership of the principals for the improvement of the school. Parents/guardians were requested about the activities and connection of the principals' performances. To assess the quality of education in the school, student"s grade at the primary classes in Nepali, Math and Social studies were imitative from the grade sheet for year 2018 and 2019. In addition, to study the regularity of the students, primary students' attendance was also copied from students' attendance register for 2018 and 2019. The data analysis was commonly descriptive in nature. There were nine different cases of the sample schools. Each case was studied separately tracing out the activities and characteristics of the principal. These activities contain principal's role in the improvement of school"s physical infrastructure, improving access to education, education quality, principal's characteristics and supervision and monitoring. Similarly, principal's relationship with the school teachers/teachers SMCs, parents, EDCU (Unit Chief) and with the local governments in the communal was also examined.
Attempt was also made to excellent relationships between principal's role and students' learning accomplishment, student uniformity, school teachers' time on task and enrolment design respectively. A total of 2,484 students' attendance and scores have been traced from the school registers to study their regularity and learning accomplishment. Similarly, sixty-six teachers' daily attendance records were sketched. The School Improvement Plan (SIP) of the model school also has been thoroughly evaluated to find out the access, school's vision and forthcoming plans.

Limitation of the Study
While drafting the research objectives and questions, I had made the decision to go through the school directly but due to COVID -19 I conducted the focus group discussion in Zoom and Google meet. The sample size was limited to Okhaldhunga district and five community schools to compare to schools from seventy seven districts of Nepal. The sample size was too small to make implications of the research findings. However, the in-depth investigation is supposed to shed some principals on the characteristics, roles and functions of the successful principal.

Result and Discussion
Principal's position is at the serious point at which all the mechanisms of education system, planning, delivery and management rests. Principal's strong leadership has provided an effective harmonization between and among the school teachers, SMC members, students and the parents. Principal's visionary role, commitment, and leadership skills have evidenced to be crucial on successful management of the school. Principals are often the role model that straight influences school environment and inspire people in the community and gives new high principal to the school. Above all, the successful principals were found to be dedicated and committed for improvement of the school performance. They have one thing in common, that is taking imaginations to apply pioneering plans and activities to create funds from local sources, to recollect student population, and to improve learning accomplishment. Some of these pioneering plans are really remarkable for other schools to take the lesion. Summary of this study is also prearranged under the broad sub-headings of access, physical improvement, and school cleaning activities, extra-curricular activities, maintaining school discipline, motivation, and team management etc. were measured as the aspects determining the Principals' leadership skills; Access to Education.
The successful Principals have implemented effective approach to bring about considerable enrolment in their schools. To keep school enrolment to equitable sizes these schools have adopted a number of self-initiated and selfdesigned activities. The Principals have shown strength of mind and have taken subsequent creativities to implement self-initiated, ground-breaking activities to progress school enrolment. To bring-in the out-of-school children, the Principals have applied stratagems such as home visit; awareness programme, school grounded ECD class conduction; providing different schemes of scholarships, and distributing copies, pencils, dresses and other necessities.
One of the schools is providing a cash loan of up to NRs. 300-500/-cash to disadvantaged groups such as daily wages workers, and street vendors. The loan is provisional in which the receiver has to enroll their children in the school and has to guarantee that the children attend school commonly.
Furthermost, SMCs and Principals are enthusiastically involved in fund-raising activities and have been successful to generate funds from different sources. Principals have adopted several noticeable strategies to improve education quality. Some of the ways and means adopted by the successful schools are maintaining to continue discipline in school motivating students and teachers by rewards and appreciation, Consistent monitoring and supervision of class conduction, student attendance and teacher"s consistency, coaching classes for feeble and interested students. Contests and competitions between the group and individual for personal development are essential.
Principals have implemented various stratagems to run the school effectively. The Principals have invested their time with the SMC, Parents, Rural Municipality (RM) meetings, visit to the EDCU, NGOs and INGOs, trainings, seminars, SIP development and door to door movement. They have continued affectionate relationship with various contributor representatives, local leaders, business enterprise, and social personnel. This has facilitated to generate funds for school enlargement.
Furthermost, the schools have accomplished to generate some kinds of funds from one source or additional and the fund raising activities are done with the support of school teachers, SMCs, societies and paternities. Some donors have contributed in currency and some have contributed in constructing toilets for boys and girls, drinking water, classrooms, buildings, compound walls and some have donated on numerous kinds of teaching learning materials.
In some schools, UNICEF and some local clubs continuous support on school cleaning activities and designed groups for teaching students how to wash hands, clean toilets and tube well. These groups not only clean the school grounds but also clean the roads by removing the woods, making the people conscious of toilet building, cleaning hands, controlling diarrhea, burying waste materials in the pits, etc. The UNICEF also has delivered a wooden stand mirror, towels; nail cutter and comb, which were used by the students frequently.
Dedicated and committed principal can create school environment clean and attractive. In a school, the principal chase-away the people who were alcoholics and drug-addicts. Transparent principal is able to bring contributors and public support in the school. In a school, the transparent activities made by the principal was donors' name registered and presented on the office room, permitting the teachers to know the conclusions taken in the SMC meetings and the information acknowledged from the EDCU and other officialdoms, shaped numerous sub-committees such as decision-making, account permission, parent's mobilization and school cleaning committee, informs the teachers on outdoor school visit programs, and sharing class load correspondingly to all.

Conclusions
The successful principals have expert to have affectionate relationship with the SMC, local representatives of the donor communities and the EDCU staff. Those schools have created pleasant learning atmosphere in school for all the working staff. Such learning atmosphere is vibrant to encourage harmonization and team work in the school. Principal's character and self-discipline, creativity, and independence were some of the characteristics that help enhancement reliance and admiration to the principal and which showed the better performances of any schools too.
The Principals among schools, measured relatively better in the neighborhood, have been found to have some characteristic differences. These Principals have exposed determination and the very characteristics of taking selfinitiatives to implement pioneering programs and activities in order to increase the school enrollment, to recollect their enrollments, to progress education quality in their schools. More significantly, all the principals were found exclusively active in mobilizing local community and local contributor representatives for fund raising for school enlargements. Unlike the public schools, the management in these successful schools had been found to have actively engaged in numerous self-initiated activities without much respect to the government maintained programs and activities. Hence, it seems that the determination and taking self-initiatives is essential to maintain school enrollments, education quality and collecting funds for school improvement.