An Assessment of Intercessory Skills and Abilities of Traditional Leaders Viewed as Important in Handling Conflict between Schools and Communities and Their Impact on Education: A Case of Zaka and Bikita Districts. Masvingo: Zimbabwe

Abstract

In Zimbabwe traditional leaders are part and parcel of school development especially in the rural areas. They hold a soul responsibility of handling conflicts that arise between the schools and communities. It has been noted that some disasterous conflicts between schools and communities have been reported, resulting in closure of schools or unacceptable staff turnover. This has been attributed to poor hadling of the conflicts and lack of an amicable solution..

The study, employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. It was located in the paradigm of pragmatism.

Multi-stage stratified random sampling was employed to select 290 respondants, 30 were interviewed,100 wer1 divided into 4 focus groups and 160 questionnaires were distributed to school heads, school development chairpersons and traditional leaders in two chosen districts. Of the distributed questionnaires 121 were returned giving a return rate of 74.375%

The study found that A lot of attributes concerned with skills and abilities of traditional leaders in handling conflicts between schools and their communities were cited. It was noted that the attributes were among the following catergories : People management skills , Abilities to make inferences , Ability to elicit solutions and Ability to facilitate communication among disputants . The study also revealed that lack of the important skills and abilities by traditional leaders would result in severe consequences in schools such as high staff turn over, high failure rate as a result of lack of trained staff. Also under development of schools as a result of persitant conflict between school and community which leads to parents not paying cool levies. It was also noted that religion was a also one of the factors in causing conflict. It was also noted that where there is peace between the school and community there was a lot of development.

 It was recommended that there should be increased communication between communities and schools through the school development commitees and the traditional leaders. Traditional leaders should be educated about conflict handling and their limits in the day today running of schools. Profession issue should be separated from tradional ritual issues and political issues. More training in conflict resolution for traditional leaders is necessary to avoid fueling conflict due to lack of skills in conflict resolution.

The ministry of education shoul hold workshop for teachers, traditional leaders and school development committees so as to avoid role conflict nad enlighten them on divin of function