ADOPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN SELECTED PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN BLANTYRE RURAL WEST

Abstract

The practices of managing people have undergone tremendous changes. However, today public and private organizations can no longer afford to look at people as a commodity to be exploited to exhaustion and then discarded. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which human resource management practices are utilized in selected public primary schools within Blantyre rural. The target population consisted of head teachers at selected primary schools, teachers and primary education advisors. Seventy-three respondents were selected for the sample of the study using purposive and random sampling methods. Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews. Thematic analysis was used to categorize the qualitative data into themes and sub-themes. The results of the study will be important to policymakers and various stakeholders in the primary education sector, and future researchers who may wish to do more research in this field or other related fields. The findings suggest that public primary schools in Blantyre Rural, to a reasonable extent, have adopted HRM practices such as training, motivation, the orientation of staff, and supervisory support among others. It also reveals that performance appraisal and employee participation in decision-making have been practised.