Abstract

This study aimed to assess organizational health (OH) in secondary schools in Jeddah district in Saudi Arabia. A second aim of the study was to compare the organizational health of these schools according to their rankings on student achievement tests, school type and the nature of the respondents' work. The Organizational Health Inventory (OHI), developed by Hoy and Feldman (1987), was used to examine OH in the subject schools. The (138) secondary schools in Jeddah district were classified into three main categories (high, average, low) based on their students' results on the achievement test for science colleges, which is given annually across the nation by the National Center for Assessment in Higher Education (NCAHE). With the school and not the respondent selected as the unit of research, 20 random schools from each category were compared using the ratings of "high"-achieving, "average"-achieving and "low"-achieving schools, as measured by the NCAHE, on the 7 dimensions of the OHI. All the principals and teachers working in the three selected representative school categories were approached in the process of data collection. The secondary schools’ OH scores were found relatively high. The high-achieving schools had higher OH scores than the schools in other two categories. Moreover, the average-achieving schools outperformed the low-achieving schools on overall OH scores. Findings also showed that the private schools had healthier climates than the public schools. Schools can help improve their student learning process and academic attainment by improving the health of their organizational environment.

Key words:  Organizational health, school health, school climate, secondary schools, student achievement.