Abstract:
This study is primarily focused on the Practice and Challenges of Community Participation in
Schools Management, The Case of Jimma Zone Secondary Schools. The purpose of this study
was to investigate the Practice and Challenges of Community Participation in Schools
Management. Data were collected from teachers and schools’ principals, Parent Teachers
Association (PTA), woreda Education officials and Cluster Supervisors. Closed ended
questionnaire and open ended questionnaire was used as the instruments of data collection. In
this study, descriptive research design, which includes quantitative and qualitative methods, was
used. The participants were teachers and schools’ principals, Parent Teachers Association
(PTA), woreda Education officials and Cluster Supervisors. Simple random sampling was used
for Teachers and schools’ principals, Purposive sampling technique was used to determine the
sample of Parent Teachers Association(PTA), woreda Education officials and Cluster
Supervisors. The quantitative findings showed that the practice of community participation in
schools’ management is high the mean value of more than 4 and the extent to which the
community participated in schools’ management is low with the mean value of more than 2 when
compared to the practice of community participation. Furthermore, the qualitative findings
showed that there are different Challenges of Community Participation in Schools Management
such as reluctance of the school management to participate in the identification of the need
assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation process; poor community participation in
decision making process of the school management and poor governance and leadership skills of
the principal, lack of well-developed school policies, rules, regulation, norms and no
appropriate strategy for the school to encourage and provide community services, information
about school improvement program, Low teacher commitment, Negative Attitudes. The
researcher tried to recommend that in order to make balance the practice of community
participation in schools management and the extent to which the community participated in
schools management the concerned stake holders should work cooperatively
