Participation of Head Teachers in the education leadership and management training programme in Lusaka District,Zambia

The purpose of this study was to determine participation of head teachers in Education Leadership and Management (ELM) training programme in selected primary and secondary schools of Lusaka District. The objectives were to; investigate the views of head teachers regarding their participation in Education Leadership and Management training programme; establish whether or not the head teachers who had done education leadership and management training programme would recommend the programme to their colleagues who had not yet trained and; determine the relevance of education leadership and management training programme offered to school head teachers. The study adopted a mixed methods approach in which data collection methods were triangulated. The study sample was 103 which comprised 100 head teachers and 3 Education Leadership and Management Training Programme Providers. Qualitative data were analysed through a thematic approach where it were categorized, tabulated and arranged under themes while quantitative data were entered in excel, analysed using Micro soft excel and presented using graphs, bar and pie charts. The findings established that the trained head teachers (44 =44%), would recommend the programme to their colleagues who had not yet been trained in Education Leadership and Management (ELM) to do so. The majority of the respondents (89=89%) reported that Education Leadership and Management (ELM) is a relevant programme for head teachers because it trains proper management of human and non-human resources to head teachers. The study concluded that the head teachers were not participating into the programme as expected. This was due to various challenges cited as; lack of information about the programme, lack of time to attend and lack of funds to enable them pay. The study therefore recommended that; the government and the institution (Chalimbana University) should put more effort in advertising and marketing the programme to all provinces; the government should consider sponsoring all head teachers including those in private schools; the government and the institution must introduce the programme online to cater for those who cannot manage to attend either during the holidays or during the term; the government should introduce fast track programme for ELM