A programme to facilitate principals' financial management of public schools

[摘要] English: Since 1994, the South African education system has been characterised by theimplementation of new legislation steering the restructuring of managementsystems and the decentralisation of powers to schools, as also set out in thepreamble of the South African Schools Act No 84 of 1996. This includes thedelegation of decision-making powers regarding the management of school fundsto School Governing Bodies of Section 21 public schools, as well as to theprincipals as the financial managers of these schools. Consequently publicschool principals need to have the skills, knowledge and appropriate attitudesthat are required in order to ensure that public funds are spent wisely.In the light of his own experience as a public school principal, and having had tomanage school funds over a period of seven years, as well as being influencedby reports of financial malpractices amongst departmental employees of the FreeState Department of Education (FSDoE) since 2003, the researcher opted to doan investigation into the need for and the nature of a possible extended and/orimproved programme to better facilitate principals' financial management ofpublic schools in the province.In order to do the investigation, the researcher firstly employed an extensiveliterature review regarding the major roles and responsibilities of school principalsas financial managers of schools, as well as possible programmes to developschool principals as financial managers in South Africa. The research design andmethodology employed involved an embedded mixed methods approachconsisting of two empirical research phases. During phase one the researcherfirstly undertook a situation analysis by means of a quantitative checklist surveyamongst public school principals in the Motheo Education District of the FSDoE.In order to validate the findings of the checklist survey, he subsequentlyemployed an embedded, qualitative, interactive and one-on-one interview surveyamongst non-respondents to the checklist survey, as well as an embedded, noninteractive,qualitative interview survey amongst office-based education officials(nominated for this purpose by two provincial education departments). In short,the research findings from this first phase of the investigation may besummarised as follows:· Despite any existing attempts or programmes to facilitate principals' financialmanagement of public schools, it was clearly reported that school principals in the Free State Province still experienced problems with the execution of theirfinancial management roles and responsibilities at the time of the surveys.· Some of the school principals taking part in the surveys were not conversantwith and/or did not adhere to all the regulations and guidelines regarding theirfinancial management responsibilities.· In general, the participants involved in the mentioned surveys were in favourof an extended and/or improved programme to better facilitate principals'financial management of public schools.These findings were considered to be an adequate answer to the basic question:WHY should an extended/improved developmental financial managementprogramme be established? During phase two of the empirical investigation theresearcher was eventually able to formulate a semi-final plan for an extendedand/or improved support, training and development programme consisting of 67salient features, inductively derived from the findings of the literature study andthe preceding surveys, and which relate to the remaining five basic and guidingquestions: HOW?; WHAT?; WHO?; WHEN?, and WHERE?. The semi-final planwas then evaluated by a panel of purposefully selected office-based educationofficials and public school principals who were considered to be expertsregarding public school principals' financial management problems. The results ofthis quantitative questionnaire evaluation survey confirmed the validity of at least62 of the 67 features.In his final plan for a programme to facilitate principals' financial management ofpublic schools, the researcher subsequently replaced five of the 67 featuresproposed in the semi-final plan with improved features and recommended theaddition of three more important features. It is hoped that the FSDoE, as well asother provincial education departments in South Africa, will be able to use theproposed plan in the development of customised support, training anddevelopment programmes for school principals as financial managers of publicschools.

[发布机构] University of the Free State