Abstract:
Subject to the South African Schools Act, 84 of 1996 section 16(1), the governance of every public school is vested in its
governing body and it may perform only such functions and obligations and exercise only such rights as prescribed by the
Act. Section 30(1a) of this Act demands school governing bodies to establish committees and appoint members of the
School Governing Body (SGB) to such committees based on expertise. With this study I investigated the financial
management decision-making of school finance committees in public primary schools in the Mpumalanga province in South
Africa. A qualitative approach was applied in the study. Focus-group interviews were used to collect data from the
purposefully selected 2 public primary schools in which the finance committee members were involved. A case study design
was applied. Thematic data analysis was used to analyse the collected data. All the participants demonstrated awareness of
their financial management decision-making roles. Participants revealed that they did not perform their roles effectively due
to their illiteracy levels, limited understanding of financial management legislation, inadequate training, interference of the
principals in the management of finances, poor consultation and communication. I recommend to the Department of
Education to provide financial committees with adequate support and training, to capacitate principals in the area of human
relations and resource management and consider appointing financial management advisors at the circuit offices within
districts to assist in guiding, monitoring and evaluating the financial management processes in schools on a regular basis.
