A study on the implementation of the school based management in secondary schools in Malawi

The school based management has become the common feature in many countries worldwide. Malawi educational system also adopted educational decentralisation in 1988. It is believed that this system contribute effectively to the educational performance of those countries that apply it. Despite the school based management being accorded with high attention in some countries, in Malawi it is not like that. Most of the comments associated with issues of poor education quality in Malawi are associated with educational management. Therefore, this study aimed at finding out how the implementation of the school based management is affecting the students' performance as well as educational development in secondary schools in Malawi. The study was conducted in the 2014-2015 Malawian academic year and it was carried in the Central East Educational Division of Malawi and it only involved four government secondary schools that started applying the model of school based management since its inception in Malawi. The purposive sampling method was used in order to draw the rich data. For the complehensive investigation of the cases, the study used the mixed design of the qualitative and quantitative methods. The participants in the study were the headteachers, the Educational Division Manager, teachers, as well as the students. The results show that the impact of management ineffectiveness and inefficiency has profound effect on teaching and learning in the schools studied. Many classes are not being attended to by some subject teachers; student attainment is low, and many students repeat in the schools in order to improve their examination results. This has been caused mainly by inadequate managerial knowledge and skills, and inadequate resources. Therefore, there is need for both the schools and Ministry of Education to implement a number of innovations in order to improve the situation. Key words: Malawi, educational policy, school based management, school improvement.