The perceptions of schools' leaders of their capabilities of leading schools autonomously in Saudi Arabia

Educational management is a controversial issue around the world. Many nations continue to manage education centrally. Saudi Arabia is one of those nations. Saudi Arabia’s centralised system of educational decision making is... [ view full abstract ]

Educational management is a controversial issue around the world. Many nations continue to manage education centrally. Saudi Arabia is one of those nations. Saudi Arabia’s centralised system of educational decision making is controlled by the ministry of education offices, while essential people in the educational process such as school leaders have no say in the process. However, recent educational reforms suggest that Saudi Arabia may be moving towards a decentralised system of education, which would involve the transfer of decision making powers to local governments and schools. The main purpose of this study is to explore schools’ leaders’ perceptions of their capacity to work more independently in the context of national school reform, that may result in Saudi Arabia shifting from a centralised to a more decentralised system.

This study adopted a quantitative and qualitative research approach. The collecting of data comprised of three phases; the first phase was the questionnaire that targeted male and female schools’principals, and the second part comprised of interviews with school principals, and the third phase involved interviews with some experts. 

The findings of the study indicate that schools’ leaders are very positive of their capabilities of leading school autonomously, they agreed that applying school autonomy will be a significant positive change in school management and has a significant impact on education development. In addition, the results of the study identified the potential hindrances of school autonomy implementation and the implementation needs of autonomous schools.