The study aimed at investigating Principals’ leadership functions as a correlate of educational wastage in Secondary Schools in the South West Region. The Theory of Transformational Leadership by Burns elucidated principals’ leadership functions and the Academic Mediation Theory by Vincent Tinto Led for educational wastage. This paper is based on the results from a Principal Leadership Questionnaire for Educational Wastage (PLQEW) survey that was done in Cameroon as part of a bigger research project. The questionnaire data collected from teachers and principals from the field was first processed using Epi-Data 3.1 whereby, all the participants’ responses were keyed, in accordance with each of the test items. Quantitative data was exported to SPSS version 25 for further consistency, data range and validation checks with the purpose to first identify invalid codes (data cleaning) with the aid of exploratory statistics. The findings revealed that there was a strong correlation between principals’ leadership function and educational wastage. As contribution to knowledge, a distinction was made between the principal’s leadership function and that of Administration and management. Some strategies to curb educational wastage in secondary schools were suggested. The following recommendations were made. Principals should receive formal training in their specialization of educational leadership and management prior to their appointment.
Keywords: Principals’ Leadership Functions, Educational Wastage, Secondary Schools in Cameroon
