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Fall 2011 50transparency (Cheung and Kan, 2009), autonomy and flexibility in making decisions (Cheng and Mok, 2007). This was intended to help the employees develop the school and strengthen their sense of belonging to the school.Different features of SBM are being implemented in Hong Kong schools to assure quality. However, experience suggests that the policy of School Management Initiative hascreated many implementation problems resulting in negative perceptions of SBM. It appears that time is inadequate for principal preparation and teacher training programmes to prepare a body of professionals to cope with the changes required, and the Education Department does not sufficiently promote school management effectiveness in schools. School community members have insufficient incentive for schools to take or accept responsibility for achieving school management effectiveness. Schools appear to feel discouraged by the inflexible funding and funding levels unrelated to performance. Hong Kong’s primary school system has been configured in a unique way because the Education Department is the central bureaucracy. Unlike the private, profit-making schools and those government schools controlled by the Education Department, most aided schools are publicly funded as they operate under a Code of Aid and a Letter of Agreement between the Director of Education and the schools’ sponsoring body. SBM appears to conflict with the previous practices in local primary schools and school reformers, principals and teachers have to confront several tensions in restructuring. The three main such tensions are: changes in the way of teaching and learning in schools; changes in the occupational situation of educators, like decision-making processes and conditions of teachers’ work in schools;; and changes in the school governance and the distribution of power between schools and their clients. Moreover, as the principals are the highest rank and the direct manager of the schools, their perceptions of SBM are also important. Evidence indicates that most of the principals are of opinion that they are facing new challenges as the leader of the school. Most of the principals are not sure whether they should also need to play the role of school manager (Gamage and Sooksomchitra, 2004). According to the policy document - The School Management Initiative (SMI): Setting the Framework for Quality in Hong Kong Schools (EMB&ED, 1991) and previous researches (e.g., Casner-Lotto, 1988; Lingard et al., 2002; Byrne and Mckeown, 2000, etc), ‘financial planning and control’ is an essential element to improve SBM. It appears that no study has focused on the effectiveness of ‘financial planning and control’ in SBM in Hong Kong primary schools. Therefore, it is worthwhile for us to fill this research gap. More specifically, this study aims to investigate the following research question, as perceived by principals and teachers: How effective is the implementation of ‘financial planning and control’ in SBM in Hong Kong primary schools?Theory BackgroundIn the 1970s and 1980s, student performance was judged to be far from adequate in Hong Kong. Wong (1995a) argued that this was partly due to the tightening of administrative and financial controls over the schools caused by the proliferation of Education Department’s policies over the years. The Education Department published the School Management Initiatives in 1991 and suggested that all schools should implement school-e-Journal of Organizational Learning and Leadership Volume 9, Number 2
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