THE STATUS OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN GEDEO ZONE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the Status of community participation of Secondary schools in Gedeo Zone. For this study, sequentional explanatory design included along with both quantitative and qualitative method. The data were used to gather information through questionnaire, interviews and document analysis. In this study, 127 teachers which were selected by simple random sampling and 48 school managements which were selected avaliability, filled and returned the questionnaire collected through the quantitative data. In addition, 10 school leaders were selected avaliability interview collected through the quanlitative data . The other tool used in this study was document analysis. Data obtained were analyzed using statistical tools such as percentage, ,weighted mean and one-way t-test. The findings of the study indicated that the extent to which community participation in the management of secondary school such as planning, resource mobilize, decision making, managing discipline and monitoring and evaluation was low level. The findings also indicated that factors that affect the community participation in the management of secondary schools include lack of commitment, lack of training, inappropriate time and place of meeting, negative attitudes of principals and teachers towards the role of community representatives members and lack of confidence of community representatives members for they are not professional. Thus, providing adequate training for members of PTA and KETB and for school leaders, adopting participatory and demographic leadership style by school leaders, creating conducive working environment in the schools and equipping schools by basic resources some of the forwarded recommendations.