Dual management and experiences of school, Army and civilian education authorities in Military aided Schools: A case of Arakan Barrack Schools in Lusaka

This study was aimed at exploring and understanding the lived experiences of school authorities, military authorities and education authorities of the dual management of military aided schools in Arakan Barracks in Lusaka. The motivation behind this study was that there was no known study had looked at dual management of the military, hence not knowing the problems therein. In order to understand the experiences the study made use of a qualitative enquiry that was grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology.
Purposive sampling supplemented by snowball sampling was used to come up with the desired sample size of 30 respondents and the resultant Data was collected and achieved by the use of in depth interviews. The data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis in order to transcribe the bulk data into themes and sub themes. The findings were in line with the objectives which were, to find out (a) managerial challenges faced by school managers (b) coping mechanisms of school managers and management challenges (c) regulatory measures put in place to curb management challenges. On management challenge findings show that the different statutes that is 106 for the Military and 234 for Ministry of General Education is a cause of management challenges. The findings further showed that civilian deputy school managers fail to accept the appointment done by the military authorities of school managers that are of military personnel, hence management challenges.