TRANSPARENT, ETHICAL AND ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES OF SCHOOL HEADS IN QUEZON PROVINCE: AN INPUT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PRIMER

This study investigated the transparent, ethical, and accountable (TEA) governance of school leaders in Quezon Province. Through the mixed method of research, a survey questionnaire and open-ended interview were used to elicit responses from the school heads and teachers who were selected randomly from the four districts in the entire province. It involved 8 public secondary school heads and 400 teachers. Frequency and percentage, arithmetic mean, and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed in the treatment of data. Specifically, the study focused on classifying the best practices of the school heads and teachers in Quezon Province following the initiated program of Region IV-A‘s ?SCOUTERS ROCK?. Results of the study showed that among the 12 indicators of the TEA governance SCOUTERS ROCK, creating and nurturing productive partnership with stakeholders and systematically pushing higher levels of practice in school-based management were practiced and implemented to a great extent by the teacher respondents in their respective schools. Issues and challenges were found in strengthening the merit system and open ranking procedures, opening all channels of communication, recognizing and scaling up research-enabled best practices, optimizing the utilization of ICT in improving access to and quality of basic education services and conserving water, energy and other resources while performing the tasks. There was no significant difference in the responses made by the teachers from the four districts of Quezon in terms of opening all channels of communication, delivery of service, and presenting regular financial reports. However, there was a significant difference in the responses of the teachers in terms of strong merit system, collaborative partnership, upholding work ethics, tracking teaching-learning activities, researched-enabled best practices, schoolbased management, optimizing ICT utilization, conservation of resources and keeping school safe and eco-friendly. Educational administrators are accountable to the stakeholders in education as well as accountable for achieving the goals of education using available resource and employing globally acceptable best practices in school administration.