THE HEADTEACHERS’ FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ROLE IN MZUZU CITY PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

In its endeavour to mitigate financial mismanagement in public secondary schools of Malawi and enhance financial prudence, transparency and accountability, the Government of Malawi (GoM) gave headteachers some autonomy and decentralized financial management. This followed the trends observed in many other countries worldwide in the last three decades which moved towards education decentralization of formal education. (Hallack et al., 2007;Grauwe, 2004 & Somer, 1996). Guided by the formal and collegial models of the theories of educational management, and the organizational theories based on decentralization, the study investigated the headteachers’ role in budgeting, accounting and auditing role in ten public secondary schools in the City of Mzuzu. In general, the study has confirmed the results of the survey done by Reviere et al,. (2009) that headteachers do not always know what their financial management roles are. Consequently, they have been subjected to audit queries due to the mismanagement of funds through misappropriation, fraud, pilfering of cash, theft and improper control of school funds (Government of Malawi, 2011). The study claims that headteachers are part of the bureaucracy of the education system in Malawi, with administrative and bureaucratic responsibilities, and upward accountability so that they have not engaged other stakeholders in financial management at school level seriously. Furthermore, they lack financial skills and knowledge in budgeting, accounting and auditing, which are the basis of the school financial.