What is it about?
This study explores how school leaders in resource-constrained environments maintain educational quality despite chronic financial shortages. By combining qualitative interviews and advanced modeling techniques, the research develops a twelve-level framework showing that ethical and transparent financial management is the foundation of effective leadership. The model demonstrates that when school leaders act as responsible stewards of limited resources, they build trust, participation, and sustained learning. The findings offer a practical roadmap for education policymakers to strengthen financial capacity and promote equity in disadvantaged schools.
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Why is it important?
Educational systems in under-resourced contexts often focus on instructional reform while overlooking the financial conditions that make quality education possible. This study is important because it reframes financial management not as a technical or peripheral task, but as a core ethical responsibility of educational leadership. By showing how transparent and responsible stewardship of scarce resources strengthens trust, participation, and long-term learning, the framework offers policymakers and school leaders a practical lens for addressing inequality. The findings are particularly timely for education systems facing chronic funding constraints and growing accountability pressures.
Perspectives
This article emerged from my doctoral research and from sustained engagement with school leaders working under severe financial constraints. What struck me most was that leadership quality in these contexts was not defined by access to resources, but by how ethically and creatively limited resources were managed. Developing this framework was an attempt to give conceptual visibility to practices that are often taken for granted or rendered invisible in policy discussions. I hope this work encourages researchers and policymakers to take financial stewardship seriously as a moral and relational dimension of educational leadership.
Dr. Shafie Arzani
Islamic Azad University Urmia Branch
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Financial stewardship as a foundational dimension of educational leadership: a hierarchical framework for equity in under-resourced schools, The International Journal of Educational Management, December 2025, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ijem-11-2025-0910.
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