Exploring Financial Management Challenges of Secondary School Heads in Region III: A Mixed-Methods Basis for Enhanced Financial Management Plan

The main objective of this study is to explore the financial management challenges of secondary school heads in Region III. The study used mixed or triangulation method to describe the general findings of the study in the form of questionnaire made up of combination of Likert scale and open-ended questions to collect information from the school heads of Region III. The purposive population of this research is composed of 30 participants-school heads. For the quantitative part of the study, most of the school heads are mid-career professionals aged 41–50, predominantly male, holding Principal II positions, and are highly educated with most having Master’s or Doctorate degrees. Most have over 10 years of service and have primarily undergone national-level financial management training. On the challenges in financial management skills of school heads, the school heads demonstrated very high proficiency in financial management, with Procurement ranking first (M=3.86), followed by Budgeting (M=3.85), Accounting (M=3.72), and Asset Management (M=3.69), all indicating highly efficient performance across these areas. On the challenges in financial management of school heads, the overall challenges in financial management were rated as "Somehow Challenging" (M=1.60), with the greatest difficulty in fund utilization (M=1.87) and internal control (M=1.66), while process flow (M=1.46) and policy adherence (M=1.42) were generally not considered problematic.