Navigating a New Terrain: Exploring the Challenges Confronting Lesotho’s Novice Secondary School Principals
Sepiriti Sepiriti 
, Kelello Alicia Rakolobe & Tebello Tlali
Issue: Vol.6 No. 1 January 2025 Special Issue Article 5 pp. 58 – 75
DOI : https://doi.org/10.38159/jelt.2025615 | Published online 28th March, 2025.
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Secondary school principals in Lesotho are tasked with specific duties generally aimed at promoting potency while scaffolding the development of skills and socially acceptable attitudes among the youth. Principals are therefore expected to lead various activities in order to achieve sustainable learning environments. Despite the magnitude of their responsibilities, novice principals are often susceptible to various challenges and hurdles while carrying out these responsibilities. To unearth the school-based administrative challenges and issues confronting novice principals in Lesotho, this qualitative study employed narrative research design to capture their lived experiences. Social Justice (SJ) theory, as the main philosophical underpinning, and Organisational Socialisation (OS) theory as the secondary lens were adopted as theoretical stances for this study. Ten novice principals who were in the first two years of their appointment were purposively identified from secondary schools in the Maseru district. The selected principals were interviewed through semi-structured interviews. Using the inductive thematic data analysis approach, some of the findings revealed that some novice principals in Lesotho secondary schools are continually confronted with challenges that include teachers’ resistance to change, demoted principals’ animosity, and poor recording of school finances. The study recommends prompt processing and issuing of appointment letters and aligned salaries, induction of novice principals, training of school boards and transfer of demoted principals. The current study provides a novel contribution to literature by not only focusing on the key challenges confronting novice principals in Lesotho secondary schools as they sought to create sustainable learning environments but by further suggesting context-based remedies to the identified predicaments.
Keywords: Challenges, Leadership, Novice Principals, Secondary Schools
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Dr. Sepiriti Sepiriti is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Foundations, at the National University of Lesotho. His research focuses on issues related to educational management, leadership and administration as well as educational policy studies. With these, he aims at informing those at the helm of school management and other educational institutions with the best practices that may influence efficacy in achieving both national and institutional aspirations.
Dr. Kelello Rakolobe is a lecturer in the Department of Education Foundations at the National University of Lesotho where she teaches courses including Introduction to the Foundations of Education, Critical Issues in Education, Education Law and Education Policy, Planning and Practice. She also supervises Masters and PhD students. Her research interests are in Education Law, Education Policy, children’s rights in education, social justice and sexual diversity in the education sector.
Dr. Tebello Tlali is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy of Education in the Department of Educational in the Faculty of Education, at the National University of Lesotho.Her research focuses on philosophical issues in education, with more interest in epistemological matters related to Decoloniality and Afrocentricity; teacher professional ethics and teacher educators.
Sepiriti Sepiriti, Kelello Alicia Rakolobe & Tebello Tlali . “Navigating a New Terrain: Exploring the Challenges Confronting Lesotho’s Novice Secondary School Principals.” Journal of Education and Learning Technology 6, no.1 (2025): 58 – 75. https://doi.org/10.38159/jelt.2025615
© 2025 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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