School committee members' perception on power sharing in management of primary schools in Tanzania: a case study of Kinondoni district in Dar es salaam region

The study was about school committee members' perception on power sharing in management of primary schools in Tanzania. The study was guided by four objectives, namely, to establish school committees' perception on power sharing in management of primary schools, to assess school committees' level of understanding on their activities including practice of democracy, to assess the school committee members' perception on the practice of power sharing at local level, and to establish school committees' evaluation of their roles and responsibilities. Literature review consisted of two parts, namely, theoretical discourse and empirical findings. The population for study included all school committee members and all non-school committee parents. The sample included18 head teachers, 54 normal school committee members, 18 school committee chairpersons and 54 non-school committee parents. The study employed three sampling techniques, which were accidental, purposive and random. Data were collected through documentary review, interview schedule, and observation. Documentary review covered primary as well as secondary sources of information. Face to-face interviews were conducted with subjects in the study sample and items on the interviews schedule were semi-structured. In addition, participant observation was employed whereby the researcher participated personally in different activities. Findings revealed that big numbers of school committee members in Kinondoni district have enough knowledge on the concept of power sharing. There is a fair exercise of capacity building to school committee members, since most of them were given opportunity to attend seminars. Most of members and leaders possess the desired levels of education and there is a big understanding and implementation of education circulars and policies. Also, some of the obstacles were identified, including poor attendance of meetings, lack of cooperation among education stakeholders as well as delay in and/or insufficiency of disbursement of capitation funds. It was recommended that the MOEC should, among other things, consider motivation packages to school committee members and teachers, involve other ministries and partners of education in planning and evaluation of primary education and review the education act No. 14 on school committees.