Assessing the need for balanced scorecard management system in educational institutions

The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a need to Balanced scorecard- a strategic performance measurement system- in public high schools. The lack of an active performance management system in educational institutions and the idea that public high schools would need to Balanced Scorecard to lead their strategies in the right way is the starting point of this research. This study is a quantitative study and the data is gathered by adapting "Assessing The Need For Balanced Scorecard" test into Turkish. In this study the main research problem is "Is there any kind of need to Balanced Scorecard in public high schools according to school administrators' and teachers' views?" The adapted test is applied to a group of 140 people which consist of teachers and administrators. According to the data gathered for the quality control of the test, the test is reorganized. The adapted version of the test is applied to 374 people which consist of school administrators and teachers who work at public high schools in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts in Gaziantep. The results are analyzed by using the SPSS 11.5 programme. The evaluation results show that 59% of participants are in need of Balanced Scorecard in higher level; 38% of participants are in need of Balanced Scorecard in medium level; 2,1% of participants are in need of Balanced Scorecard in lower level. There is no meaningful relationship among the need for Balanced Scorecard and type of school, socio-economic level of school, number of students at school, participants' position at school, participants' number of year in official duty, participants' number of years in their current school. There is meaningful relationship only between the need for Balanced Scorecard and the gender of participants.