School financial management development programme for Eswatini principals: Lessons, challenges and implications

Efficient and equitable use of financial resources has been one of the education policy objectives to achieve quality in education. Subsequently, the achievement of efficient and equitable use of financial resources in schools depends on the principals’ understanding of their role in managing financial resources. However, evidence spanning developing countries suggests the existence of principals’ various inadequacies and inefficiencies in this regard. To respond to this, the Kingdom of Eswatini’s Ministry of Education and Training has developed a training programme to build financial management capacity of school principals. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 4 principals, we explored how principals in that country who had undergone professional development (PD) in financial resource management experienced different aspects of the training they had received. Principals’ experiences suggest the existence of various limitations of the programme. From these experiences, we draw lessons about the effectiveness and challenges of the programme and illuminate implications for how PD programmes can be offered to build principals’ capacities in school financial management.