Abstract:
Uganda endorsed school-based management (SBM) through the enactment of the Education Act (2008), which provided for the establishment of the School Management Committees (SMCs) in public primary schools to be in charge of managing schools on behalf of the government. The Act states that SMCs are specifically in charge of Universal Primary Education (UPE) in Uganda and are responsible for the successful implementation of the policy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of SMCs in the accountability for the UPE achievements. This study is rooted in the interpretivist constructionist research paradigm. The researcher utilised semi-structured interviews and observations to generate data to answer the research questions. The qualitative approach enabled the researcher to interact with the participants in order to harness their primary voice while sharing their lived experiences in the real world. Data obtained from the interviews and observations were corroborated with document analysis data related to SBM and accountability for universal basic primary education achievement. The researcher used multiple research sites and participants to generate data, a case study approach which is more robust in comparative data. The sampling for the participants was purposive and four SMCs from four regions of Uganda and four participants from each of the SMCs were selected. The findings of the study indicate that the voluntary SMCs did implement the roles and responsibilities for UPE accountability, though there were diverse degrees of success. The differing measures of SMC effectiveness were as a result of factors such as: member capacity and perceptions; lack of policy implementation; other stakeholder actions: and inadequate resources. The importance of a volunteerism strategy as a cornerstone of UPE implementation was eminent in this study since the schools were poorly resourced partly due to high poverty levels in the community. The researcher concludes that the effectiveness of the SMC in monitoring the implementation of UPE is based on the relationship they have with other stakeholders and, thus, a model was developed to emphasise the importance of the relationships.
