Managerial Practices and School Functioning in Approved Private Secondary Schools of Likasi I
Abstract:
Background: School leaders are responsible for administrative coordination within national education regulations, but the perceived consistency of managerial practices in private secondary schools in Likasi I has received limited empirical description.
Objective: To describe responses concerning decision-making, administrative coordination and operating conditions in state-approved private secondary schools.
Methods: A descriptive analysis examined ten five-category questionnaire items, each containing 118 recorded responses. Frequencies and percentages were calculated, and exploratory chi-square goodness-of-fit tests against equal category probabilities were evaluated with Holm adjustment for ten comparisons.
Results: Consultation before decisions was rated 'never' or 'rarely' by 42.4% of responses and 'often' or 'always' by 24.6%. Low ratings predominated for clarity of administrative procedures (58.5%), financial transparency (56.8%) and administrative resource availability (58.5%). Five of ten distributions differed from the uniform benchmark after multiplicity adjustment. Judgements about task fairness, initiative, supervision, collaboration and overall management were more dispersed.
Conclusion: The findings describe variation in perceived administrative practices but do not demonstrate effects on school performance or legal compliance. Interpretation remains restricted by incomplete respondent-level, sampling and fieldwork information. Better-defined measures of managerial practices and independent school outcomes are needed for explanatory research.
KeyWords:
school management, educational leadership, administrative governance, private secondary schools, Likasi, Democratic Republic of the Congo
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