Educational Decentralization and Community Participation in Secondary Schools Of Buno Bedele Zone

Abstract

This study explored Educational Decentralization And Community Participation In Secondary Schools Of Buno Bedele Zone Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. The specific objectives were to: assess the influence of the transfer of responsibility for planning, management, resource raising and allocation from Regional government to local government; determine the extent to which decentralized delivery of secondary education is practiced in the process of formulation, passage and implementation of public policies; and examine the challenges facing the decentralized secondary education on human resources and infrastructure in secondary schools of Buno Bedele Zone. The study was undertaken under a descriptive survey research design. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. Primary and secondary data were obtained from the respondents and relevant records/or literature. The researcher selected four Woredas and Bedele town as the sources of information by simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques respectively. Five secondary schools were randomly selected and similarly, teachers were selected by Simple random sampling. Furthermore, Woreda Education Heads, School Principals, KETB, PSTA and Community members were selected purposively because; they believe to be information rich. Questionnaire and interview were used as data collection instruments. Quantitative data were processed using SPSS-20 software. Qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis and reported in terms of themes/categories and quotations. Descriptive statistics were used included the frequencies, percentages, mean values and Standard deviations. The data were collected from 205 selected respondents using survey questionnaires; and from five school principals and five Woreda Education Heads using interview guides. Totally 205 sample respondents were included. Among the distributed questionnaires, 198 questionnaires were returned to the researcher, which means the response rate is 96.58 %. The major findings of the study were: education decentralization offers meaningful and potential outcomes between community members and local governments with mean values of (3.49, SD =.87 and 3.22, SD=1.01) respectively. Thus, education decentralization has improved delivery of education services( such as shortening of Distance to schools, empowering the community and participating in decision through school committee and high enrollment of students…). However, the challenges faced in education decentralization were shortage of science teachers 53(26.77%), lack of learning and teaching materials 45(22.73%), infrastructures (libraries, laboratories,..) 36(18.18%), Spread of COV-19 34(17.17%) and Lack of funds and Poor economic status 30(15.15%). Generally, Decentralization by Devolution will gradually bring about better results through full involvement of all concerned with taking decisions and timely empowerment of all concerned including KETB, PTSA, school administrators, deployment of qualified teachers ; fulfilling learning and teaching materials, laboratories and libraries and in the implementation of the policy.Also, taking effective and corrective measures on weaknesses, whenever monitoring unearths them.