Since 1994, the South African education system has been characterised by the
implementation of new legislation steering the restructuring of management
systems and the decentralisation of powers to schools, as also set out in the
preamble of the South African Schools Act No 84 of 1996. This includes the
delegation of decision-making powers regarding the management of school funds
to School Governing Bodies of Section 21 public schools, as well as to the
principals as the financial managers of these schools. Consequently public
school principals need to have the skills, knowledge and appropriate attitudes
that 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 to
manage school funds over a period of seven years, as well as being influenced
by reports of financial malpractices amongst departmental employees of the Free
State Department of Education (FSDoE) since 2003, the researcher opted to do
an investigation into the need for and the nature of a possible extended and/or
improved programme to better facilitate principalsâ financial management of
public schools in the province.
In order to do the investigation, the researcher firstly employed an extensive
literature review regarding the major roles and responsibilities of school principals
as financial managers of schools, as well as possible programmes to develop
school principals as financial managers in South Africa. The research design and
methodology employed involved an embedded mixed methods approach
consisting of two empirical research phases. During phase one the researcher
firstly undertook a situation analysis by means of a quantitative checklist survey
amongst public school principals in the Motheo Education District of the FSDoE.
In order to validate the findings of the checklist survey, he subsequently
employed an embedded, qualitative, interactive and one-on-one interview survey
amongst 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 be
summarised as follows:
· Despite any existing attempts or programmes to facilitate principalsâ financial
management of public schools, it was clearly reported that school principals in the Free State Province still experienced problems with the execution of their
financial management roles and responsibilities at the time of the surveys.
· Some of the school principals taking part in the surveys were not conversant
with and/or did not adhere to all the regulations and guidelines regarding their
financial management responsibilities.
· In general, the participants involved in the mentioned surveys were in favour
of an extended and/or improved programme to better facilitate principalsâ
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 management
programme be established? During phase two of the empirical investigation the
researcher was eventually able to formulate a semi-final plan for an extended
and/or improved support, training and development programme consisting of 67
salient features, inductively derived from the findings of the literature study and
the preceding surveys, and which relate to the remaining five basic and guiding
questions: HOW?; WHAT?; WHO?; WHEN?, and WHERE?. The semi-final plan
was then evaluated by a panel of purposefully selected office-based education
officials and public school principals who were considered to be experts
regarding public school principalsâ financial management problems. The results of
this quantitative questionnaire evaluation survey confirmed the validity of at least
62 of the 67 features.
In his final plan for a programme to facilitate principalsâ financial management of
public schools, the researcher subsequently replaced five of the 67 features
proposed in the semi-final plan with improved features and recommended the
addition of three more important features. It is hoped that the FSDoE, as well as
other provincial education departments in South Africa, will be able to use the
proposed plan in the development of customised support, training and
development programmes for school principals as financial managers of public
schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-02032010-090849 |
| Date | 03 February 2010 |
| Creators | Ntseto, Vangeli Emmanuel |
| Contributors | Dr ER du Toit, Dr SP van Tonder |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-02032010-090849/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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