Community involvement in educational planning and management: a case of Mphamba and Lundazi primary schools in Lundazi district Zambia.
Date
2022-07-19
Authors
Chipeta, Loveness
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Zambia
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate the extent to which communities are involved in
educational planning and management at Mphamba and Lundazi Primary School. The objectives
that guided the study were to: establish the educational planning and management activities at
primary school level, determine the extent to which the community is involved in educational
planning at primary school level, identify challenges faced by the schools and the community in
their quest to work together and propose strategies aimed at enhancing community involvement
in education planning and management.
This study used a descriptive research design in which quantitative and qualitative data was
collected. The sample size comprised 30 respondents namely, 6 administrators, 12 teachers and
12 parents who were purposively sampled. In – depth interviews guides and semi-structured
interview guides were used in this study. The data collected was analysed using thematic
categorizations and presented in narrations. Verbatisms which were relevant to the study, were
also considered presented.
The study revealed that educational planning and management in primary education involves
making curricular decisions regarding what students are to learn and instructional decisions
regarding the learning experiences to be provided in the classroom. The study also revealed that
it included scheduling of learning activities in the major planning task, projects to be done with
their time frame, co-curricular and localised curriculum teaching activities and budgeting.
The study further established that community members were not very much involved in
educational planning and management. The reasons advanced included teachers and parents
resistance, too many curricular changes, low student performance, community members not
always being there for the school, lack of appreciation from community members and the
community poor education background.
The study further revealed that the school and the community faced challenges in their quest to
work together and these are negative altitude from parents towards school programmes; some
parents could not pay PTA funds, and other were busy with their own works and businesses.
Other challenges were lack of appreciation from the community members, teachers and parents,
resistance to work together with the school, curricular changes and low performance of learners.
The other challenges were that there was little interaction between parents and the school to
evaluate how activities were implemented hence parents did not know the progress of the school,
financial resources and duration taken on the activities. Additionally, the PTA executive did not
inform the parents on all the school programmes and that AGM meeting were not done every
year hence a barrier to work together with the school. The other challenge was lack of
information from the school to the community due to a series of communication channels
The findings also revealed that strategies aimed at community involvement in educational
planning and management were that schools should have action plans that are linked to goals for
learners success and that communities should be sensitised by the schools on the importance of
community involvement in education planning and management. The other strategies were that
school managers should promote effective communication between the school and parents or the
community and that parents who fail to pay PTA funds should pay in kind. It was also proposed
that teachers should interact with parents to see how they can develop the school and never to
call meetings as workshops because the latter attract money at the end.
The study recommended that the Ministry of General Education should organise more
workshops and seminars to equip head teachers with appropriate skills on how to involve
community members in educational planning and management; should create a conducive
environment for community involvement, and should be proactive and challenge all stakeholders
to engage community members in educational planning and management.
Description
Thesis
Keywords
School management and organization.