Research: Education Management in SA (4)

Financial management

Financial management is one of the most important responsibilities facing school principals since the implementation of the South African Schools Act 1996. Along with the principals, school governing bodies have wide-ranging financial responsibilities, including school-level budgeting, managing devolved funding from provincial departments, setting school fees (subject to parental agreement), and raising additional funds to augment school budgets. A largescale survey of principals in Gauteng province (Bush & Heystek, 2006) consistently demonstrated their anxiety about carrying out this function and their need for additional training to do so effectively.

Tikly and Mataboge (1997:160) examined the impact of reform on the former white schools and point to some of the financial implications of this process:

• The transfer of costs to parents and communities
• The linkage between learner enrolments and the allocation of real resources, notably teachers
• The decentralisation of financial management to school level
• The trend for wealthier schools to hire additional teachers paid for through the setting of higher fees by the school governing body (SGB).
Although legislation prevents the use of school fees to discriminate between learners, the learner profiles of certain schools seem to indicate that they are being used to limit access. This prompted research into equal access to education by Maile (2004) and Fleisch and Woolman (2004).

( Part 4 - Human resource management )

To be continued...