Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part D (2025)

Teacher empowerment has increasingly been recognized as a pivotal construct for improving educational quality, teacher motivation, and institutional effectiveness. It refers to the extent to which teachers are granted autonomy, influence over school policies, and opportunities for professional growth. Empowered teachers are more likely to demonstrate creativity in instruction, commitment to student learning, and active engagement in decision-making processes, all of which directly influence school performance. Despite its importance, there remains a paucity of empirical evidence comparing empowerment levels across different types of schools in India, where management structures and administrative practices differ widely. The present study aimed to examine the levels of teacher empowerment among three distinct categories of secondary schools-Government, Government-Aided, and Unaided-using the standardized Teacher Empowerment Scale (TES) developed by Dr. Manju N. D. and Dr. G. Sheela. A total of 600 teachers participated in this study. Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Bonferroni post hoc tests were employed to analyze differences across groups. The findings revealed statistically significant differences in teacher empowerment, with Government-Aided teachers reporting the highest empowerment scores, followed by Government teachers, and the lowest scores among Unaided teachers. These results highlight the importance of school management practices in shaping teachers’ professional autonomy and point to the need for targeted policy interventions to strengthen empowerment, particularly in privately managed unaided institutions.