A programme to facilitate principals' financial management of public schools

English: 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 principals’ 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 principals’ 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 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 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 principals’ 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 principals’ 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.