Absa and the Department of Basic Education have partnered to improve the financial management skills of thousands of education officials and members of school governing bodies (SGBs) at public schools across the country.
The School Governing Body Financial Management Programme was designed by facilitators from Absa’s Learning, Leadership and Talent unit was endorsed by the Department of Basic Education. The programme was intended to be at the level where everyone is, even an SGB member from the most rural of areas, could easily understand it support and highlight the current financial processes within schools.
The School Governing Body Financial Management Programme aims to strengthen financial management and improve accountability of schools.
The training was necessitated by the increasing number of requests to the bank from schools to provide them with overdraft facilities, and their inability to produce financial statements and budgets in many instances.
Dr. Reaan Immelman, Head of Education and Skills Citizenship at Absa, says ”Further research revealed that a substantial number of public schools, both fee and non-fee paying, lacked proper financial management and governance practices.
A key objective of this partnership with the Department of Basic Education is therefore to improve this situation through institutional capacity building in order, and to contribute towards improving the learning environment and delivery of quality education at schools. We believe that with good governance comes better teaching and learning outcomes
“Although we have had other interventions with regard to financial training before, we’ve never had a programme as accessible as the one provided by Absa”, said Department of Basic Education Director General, Mathanzima Mweli.
Absa has already spent more than R10 million in 2016 in providing financial-management training to school managers. A total of 10 521 members of school governing bodies from more than 2 700 schools in four provinces have already been trained to date. Training will also be rolled out to other provinces in 2017.
