Effective guidelines for financial management in Zimbabwean secondary schools

This study investigated the nature and constraints of the financial management frameworks and resources available to School Development Committees (SDCs) in Zimbabwean secondary schools for effective financial management practices. It examined the availability of sufficient and appropriate financial management guidelines and the extent to which the available documents impact the effectiveness of these (SDCs). The objective of this investigation is to rectify the dearth of research on the subject for Zimbabwean secondary schools. Employing a pragmatic research paradigm and mixed methods research (MMR) approach, the study utilised an explanatory sequential mixed methods research design. Guided by Stakeholder Theory, the study examined financial management strategies employed by School Development Committees (SDCs), focusing on capacity building, financial governance, and guiding financial documents. The study involved 56 secondary schools in 30 clusters in Zimbabwe. Disproportionate stratified sampling was employed to come up with four (4) clusters from which respondents and participants were drawn. The population of the study was 570 financial management school officials. Data collection involved completion of closed ended questionnaires by 61 respondents and answering of unstructured open-ended interviews by 19 participants. Data analysis involved inferential statistics for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data. The study's findings revealed inadequate capacity building of School Development Committees (SDCs) in secondary schools, hindering effective school financial management. The study also revealed that although School Development Committees in the secondary schools had financial management guiding documents, the SDCs failed to utilise the documents due to limited financial expertise, insufficient capacity building, limited linguistic accessibility, and low levels of education.