Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the policy-practice gap in improving educational
quality in secondary school of East Hararge zone. To accomplish this purpose, the study
employed descriptive survey research design, which is supplemented by quantitative and
qualitative research method to enrich data. The study was carried out on 8 secondary school
of East Hararge zone. Then, a total of 286 individuals participated in the study. Among them,
218 secondary school teachers and 60 leaders were included in the sample through simple
random sampling technique. Additionally, 8 head woreda educational office were included
through purposive sampling techniques. Questionnaire, interview, and document analysis were
the main instrument utilized during data collection. The analysis of the quantitative data was
carried out by using percent, mean, standard deviation, while qualitative data were analyzed
using narration. Finally, the results of the study revealed that the secondary school policy
practices were not effective and suffered with many challenges. Among that, inadequate
physical resource: classroom and laboratory, lack of maintain service for materials, lack
inadequate financial resource, lack of utilizing instructional technology, absence of system that
used to implement, monitor, evaluate policy practice, ineffective way of handling school
community complains, lack of up dated policy guideline, unclarity of the existing policy, school
community lack of commitment, lack of clear communication and lack of timely feedback were
the major challenges that influence the secondary school policy practice. From the results of
the finding, it is concluded that, the secondary teachers and leaders’ policy practice were
within the range of low level. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that,
educational office in each level should provide secondary school policy materials and give
frequent trainings, workshops, and seminars on policy to enhance the awareness of the
secondary school teachers and leaders.
