The study seeks to establish and provide empirical evidence of the role moral leadership plays in learner attainment. While there are many factors which can contribute to learner attainment, the aim of this inquiry is to isolate moral traits in school leadership that support learners in achieving their potential and to establish which factors influence the moral practice of SMTs. The study aims to establish the moral imperative that characterizes success in schools. Shapiro and Stefkovich (2001: 23) maintain that moral aspects unique to the profession of educational leadership ground the moral dimension of the profession on the nomothetic (normative or structural) injunction to serve the best interests of the learner.

The researchers, recognizes that school leadership is a complex construct, which has been subjected to a myriad of research initiatives nationally and internationally. However this study confined itself to high schools and investigated the moral imperative by SMTs in promoting and achieving improved learner attainment. While schools find themselves in varying contexts, it can be argued that a whole host of factors such as poverty, HIV/AIDs, child-headed families all contribute negatively to learner attainment: The overarching factor in school success is the SMTs ability to transcend environmental, physical and human challenges in a manner that will put learners first in ensuring that achievement gaps are addressed. 

Learner attainment has not only been affected by socio-economic conditions but also by a lack of moral leadership from within and outside the school. Incompetence, content gaps and little accountability on the part of the teaching fraternity is impacting negatively on learner attainment. Moral leadership may not be the panacea for addressing all the challenges within the schooling system, but rather the researcher’s wants to investigate the extent that moral leadership influences learner attainment.

 This paper will further analyse the research data and the findings thereof to elucidate the importance of moral leadership for SMTs. SMTs in becoming the agency to improve learner attainment need to inculcate moral leadership as an imperative to achieve this end.  

According to Thoms (2008: 421), moral leadership emphasizes that SMTs are at the head of school activities and therefore ethical decision-making needs to be demonstrated at that level. SMTs need to demonstrate that learner attainment is the prime reason for the schools’ existence and that learners need to be equipped with cognitive and other human skills in order to compete in a global economy. SMTs therefore need to ensure that they and their staff have a moral imperative to deliver quality teaching and that moral leadership provides the conditions for the transmission of learning competencies. The assumption is that moral leadership attempts to address the inequality of learner attainment by demonstrating that moral leadership instils an obligation on school management to ensure that all learners have equal opportunities to succeed at school. This investigation will acknowledge past inequalities and differing contexts in which teaching and learning takes place and will examine the extent to which moral leadership is able to contribute to increased learner attainment. Hoffman and Burrello (2002:1) argue that the educational leader’s day-to-day work is clearly guided by a moral purpose in the enhancement of learner attainment, contributing towards a society that is fair and just where all learners can succeed.

Moral leadership is driven by a value system that can contribute to giving purpose and meaning to what you do in the classroom. The bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of the education system has led to administrative and workload ‘burn-out’ and has often lead to complacency on the part of teachers in fulfilling their teaching obligations 

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