Financial Accountability of Public Schools: Does the onus lie with those charged with Governance or the Department of Education?

Abstract

South Africa’s education reform was focused on access, redress, and democracy. Policies like the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 were introduced to address the imbalances in education. Legislation requires those responsible for governance within public schools to submit audited financial statements to the Department of Education. There is mounting pressure from the public on all levels of government institutions to be held accountable for their actions. The purpose was to assess if internal controls, which take the shape of policies and procedures, are present, pertinent, sufficient, running efficiently, and being monitored effectively. To further identify who shall be kept accountable with regard to the monitoring process. The article aims to evaluate the internal controls, accountability, and transparency in South African Public School’s financial practices. To investigate whether South African public schools have internal controls to preserve and assure compliance with current legal standards governing accounting and auditing processes as outlined in the South African School Act 84 of 1996. The article will apply a qualitative document analysis approach to understand the public school spending and record-keeping phenomenon in-depth. Financial statements only show numerical data and do not indicate if proper accounting and auditing procedures were followed. The findings reveal the absence of internal controls; in cases where internal controls exist, they are ineffective. This article aims to contribute to assistance in clean school audit reports. The recommendation is that the Department of Education become more involved in managing departmental funds.

Keywords: Accountability; legislation; internal controls; public schools; governance