Study of Decision-Making Skills of Government and Private School Principals in Gampha District, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Decision making is selecting the appropriate option from different options. For any human being, decision making is very necessary as this is the main criteria for judging the mental ability of anyone. The principal is the backbone of any school administration. Most of the decisions are given by principal for the development of the school. In the given study, investigators compare the decision-making skills of government and private schools as well as male and female school principals. Objectives of the study are to compare the decisionmaking skills of government and private school principals in Gampaha district on the basis of gender and to compare the decision-making skills of government and private secondary school principals. The sample of the study consisted of 80 participants. The sample consists of 40 government and 40 private school principals. The sample was taken using purposive sampling. For the assessment of decision-making in school principals Decision-Making Style Scale was validated and used. Statistical techniques like Mean, Standard Deviation and t-test was used. Results denote that gender has not affected the decision-making skills of government and private school principals. Also, it is evident that significant difference exists between decisions making skills (i.e. routine, compromise, heuristic) of government school principals and private school principals. All the mean score for the government school principals are higher than the mean score of private school principals. This study despite that government school principal‘s decision making is more accurate than private school principals. On the other hand, there is no significant difference between decision-making skills on the basis of gender. The reason behind the first result may be Government school‘s principals are more independent than private school principals because government principles have to implement the policy. Private school principals have to follow the instruction from the management.