The competence of primary school principals in managing the financial resources of the school (the case of Ordu)

Abstract The purpose of this study is to find out principals' and teachers' views on the competence of primary school principals with regard to managing financial resources. The universe of the research is constituted by all principals and teachers working in state primary schools in the city center of Ordu and its 18 town centers in 2009-2010 academic year. The sample of the survey consists of 121 principals and 444 teachers that have been randomly selected from lists of principals and teachers, provided by the Ordu directorate of the ministry of national education. The “Screening Model” has been used in the survey. Data have been collected through the Questionnaire developed by researchers, on the Primary School Principals' Competence of Managing the Financial Resources of Their Schools. In the analysis of data, the Shapiro-Wilk normality test has been applied for arithmetic mean, standard deviation and homogeneity of distribution. In the case of two independent groups, the Mann-Whitney U test has been applied, and in the case of more than two independent groups, the Kruskal-Wallis test has been applied. For p<0,05 all results have been accepted as statistically meaningful. As a result of the analysis of the data, it has been concluded that primary school principals have more positive thoughts than do the primary school teachers with respect to specialization on the theory and principles of schools finances, establishing relations with external and internal systems in raising money and in terms of their level of knowledge on economics and accounting.