Leadership Practices and Performance of School Heads in Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas: Implications for School-Based Management

School leadership plays a critical role in shaping instructional quality, organizational effectiveness, and learner outcomes, particularly in contexts characterized by structural constraints and limited access to resources. In the Philippines, School-Based Management (SBM) positions school heads as key agents of decentralized governance, tasked with translating national policies into context-responsive school-level practices. This study examined the leadership practices and performance of school heads in public schools located in a Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Area (GIDA), focusing on perception differences between teachers and school heads within the SBM framework. Employing a quantitative descriptive-comparative design, data were collected from 103 teachers and 13 school heads in the Asipulo District, Ifugao. Results reveal consistent perceptual gaps, with school heads rating both their leadership practices and performance significantly higher than teachers. While leadership practices were assessed by teachers as intensively practiced and performance as maturing, school heads rated both at the highest qualitative levels. The findings suggest that in GIDA contexts, leadership effectiveness under SBM is often experienced by teachers as procedural rather than transformative. The study highlights the need for participatory, instruction-centered, and context-sensitive leadership approaches to strengthen SBM implementation in geographically disadvantaged settings.