EFFECT OF BUDGETING ON THE MANAGEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN JIGAWA STATE, NIGERIA (2013-2017)
ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to assess the influence of budgeting on the administration of secondary schools in Jigawa State. The study has five objectives among which are to: determine the influence of budgeting on staffing in secondary schools in JigawaState;examine the influence of budgeting on staff development programmes in secondary schools in Jigawastate;ascertain the influence of budgeting on the provision of instructional facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa State;. In line with these objectives, five research questions were asked and, five null hypotheses formulated. Related literatures were reviewed along with three (3) empirical studies. Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. A total of 364 respondents were sampled from the total population of 7049. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The data collected were presented in tables andanalyzed using weighted mean to answer the research questions. The five hypotheses were tested using One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for the null hypotheses at 0.05level of significance. Descriptive statistic was used to analyze the bio- data of the respondents. The major findings of the study are that: budgeting has led to employment of more staff, prompt payment of salaries and promotion of staff in secondary schools in Jigawa State,budgeting has enabled the state government to provide various staff development programmes for teachers in jigawa state, budgeting has influenced the provision of instructional facilities (library, laboratory and other to facilities).In Secondary Schools in Jigawa State, there was provision of welfare facilities due to proper budgeting in Secondary Schools in Jigawa State,budgeting has influenced the provision of games facilities in Secondary Schools in Jigawa State.. Recommendations were made which include;more funds should be made available to education sector in order to improve on the provision of quality of staff in secondary schools in Jigawa state. Serious attention should be paid to staff development programmes through effective budgetary allocation,available instructional facilities should be put for effective usage and teachers should have a way of improvisation to complement government efforts. Better welfare package should be provided for teachers in order to motivate them to do more.The government of Jigawa State should do more in the provision of games facilities in Jigawa State.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Budgeting has been a very important and useful part of administrative strategy of organizations such as educational institutions right from ages. Budgeting is a process of preparing and using budgeting to achieve management objectives (Adedeji, 2000). It is a comprehensive and coordinated plan, expressed in financial terms, for the future. Ama (2001) regarded budgeting as a plan quantified in monetary terms, prepared and approved prior to a defined period of time, usually showing planned income to be generated and expenditure to be incurred during that period. It has the fundamental importance of controlling the behaviors of administrators in the school system and it prevents wastages or reckless spending of funds provided for various educational services. The reason is that the operators of budget are compelled to follow the appropriate estimate in spending funds. Budgeting has the technical function of authorizing expenditure and serves as a microscope in analysis of details.
Financial management in organizations, firms and institutions had been a sensitive issue over the years. This is because the government and the public are interested on how funds are planned, controlled and applied for specific assignment to achieve specific objectives. In educational institutions, the realization of the desired educational goals and objectives depends largely on the efficient planning and management of school funds by the school administrators. In view of this, Alabi (2010) regretted that it is quiet unfortunate that the little resources available are not effectively managed in Nigerian schools. One thing is to raise fund but the other is to ensure that the fund raised is well utilized by school managers.
However, to ensure judicious spending of funds and accountability, school administrators plan and prepare budget for their schools.
The budgeting practices in educational institutions follow a systematic procedure. This include: budget planning, budget defense, budget approval and adoption, budget implementation and evaluation. In Jigawa State, the budgetary practices are controlled by the Ministry of Education and Secondary Schools Management Board levels. These are agencies responsible for the management of education at the secondary schools levels. The principals of the schools are not involved in all the stages of the budgeting practices mentioned above. They are highly involved in the planning, defense and implementation stage while the secondary education management board and the ministry of education carry out budget approval, adoption and evaluation.
The ministry of education and secondary education management board do these through the account supervisors who monitor and verify the financial activities of educational administrators. However, Ani (1995) defined supervisors as professionals outside or within the school who work to improve the teaching and learning process. This shows that account supervisors are leaders who perform the periodic criticisms, verifications, clarifications and justifications of financial activities of the schools through checking of the financial account records kept in the schools so that educational resources will not be misappropriated by fraudulent administrators. In Nigerian school system, many principals had been accused of poor budgeting practices by the supervisors, teachers and parents. For instance, it has been observed by some authorities that the principals do not follow budget procedures in planning and implementation of budget nor keep and follow necessary financial records (Nzekwe,
2007). Little or no work is done on adequate staffing, staff development programmes, repair of school buildings, provision of reagents and specimens for science practical, welfare/health facilities, sports and games/recreational facilities. Supporting this fact, Onyika (2009) laments that poor budgeting has accounted for the seeming neglect and dilapidation of buildings and infrastructure of a greater percentage of schools over a decade, particularly at secondary school level.
All the above cases breed mistrust and suspicion. The principals tend to lose their prestige as financial heads and also lose control on the staff and students. In extreme cases, the school administrators are called to pay back part of the misappropriated fund and nothing is achieved in the school in such situations. Olaofe, (2002) suggested that the school administrators should be knowledgeable and competent in the technique of management in the areas of budgeting, accounting and information management. Moreover, Nelson (2005) maintains that for efficient managerial ability, training and retraining of principals must evolve. This implies that principals of Nigerian secondary schools need administrative qualifications that will make them competent and confident before the staff they advise and guide. They are supposed to be well equipped through training in educational administration. This knowledge will help them to handle school budgeting effectively.
Okumbe (2008) believed that women may not measure success in performance with their male‟s counterparts for they try balancing work and family because of their primary responsibilities for children. Piana (2001) posit that females always under perform their male counterparts using a financial performance standard. This notwithstanding, some writers are of the opinion that women can perform well or even better than men. Despite the contributions of males and females in budgeting, the worry is whether the principals in Jigawa State gear their budgeting practices towards the attainment of secondary education goals as stipulated in Nigerian National Policy on Education.
In any situation where resources such as money, effort, time, and space are limited but what to use the resources for are not only unlimited but simultaneously demanding attention, budgeting becomes the most rational approach to deal with such situations. Budgeting practices in secondary schools in Jigawa State have been facing a lot of criticisms from well meaning individuals and authorities. The principals in these states are accused of poor budgeting practices by the teachers, supervisors and parents. The poor budgeting practices may be due to the fact that most principals lack the technical know-how in school management and administration. This could also be as a result of adequate funding of secondary schools by the state government. Availability of funds determines to a large extent, the level budgeting activities and practices can go. The progressive increase in school‟s population needs to be followed with increase in the provision of funds to cater for the diverse problems that may come up without which the school objectives may not be achieved. Funso(2005) observed that schools lack adequate funds necessary to carry out their academic activities. The policy of controlling secondary schools budgets by the secondary education management board through budget guidelines has put the principals in a tight corner. The principals are not free to carry on the budgeting activities. They are under strict control of the school boards and as such may not have adequate time to plan and prepare their budgets.
In Jigawa State for instance, the principals provide the ministry of education with educational budget estimates containing programs reflecting educational policies which are analyzed in terms of inputs and outputs of the schools and educational system in general. The principals after sending proposals of recurrent and capital expenditures, data and other information to the ministry of education have to wait for the approval of such in the total budget. The budget is then sent down to the school principals after approval for implementation. Usually the approvals may not necessarily be a reflection of the proposals in the budget. The school principals are therefore compelled to implement within a budget approval at variance at their disposal. This therefore is the problem which the school principals have to contend with from year to year. The school principals also have the responsibilities to appraise the budget. Consequently, the school principals are helpless in effecting improvement to the total resources when they are not approved in the budget. Similarly, discussions with some experienced budgetary experts suggest that the plight of school principals is due to the fact that they do not participate in the budgetary process at a level that can enhance what gets to the school. This means that school principals would wish to follow up their proposals to a higher level where such could be defended.
Therefore, it is on the strength of the problem situation faced by the secondary school principals that the researcher is motivated to find out influence of budget on the administration of secondary schools in the Jigawa State to explore the budgeting practices to affect the over-all administration of secondary schools in the state.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The restriction of the school administrators to the lowest level of budgetary process in Jigawa state is what interested the researcher to undertake this study. Although, this allegation has not been proved empirically but it has brought to the public notice the issue of what is the cause of poor secondary schools administration in the state. The school principals provide only the primary data for costing the budget at the secondary school level but they have nothing concerning the budgetary process at the higher level that will ensure effective funding of their proposal by the government. Though, they only receive recurrent expenditure which does not adequately relate to resource allocation to performance. This implies that outputs from the school system are not carefully itemized, deliberated and balanced against the available resources before any budget decisions are made.
Most of the budgetary decision and allocation does not capture key issues that affect school administration; consequently, this has affected the quality and quantity of staffing in secondary schools in JigawaState.In addition, staff development programmes are no longer accessible to staff due to in adequate budgetary allocation. Infrastructural facilities are grossly inadequate in most of the schools; welfare/ health facilities were near absent in most of the schools. Even game/ recreational facilities were in no way adequate for student usage.
This aforementioned problem has constituted serious hindrance to effective secondary school administration in Jigawastate.Consequently, a lot of schools projects are left uncompleted thereby leading to defiance of the over-all objectives. Power shift from one government to another is another factor which has affected proper implementation of budgetary proposals. The power shift lead to incumbency attitude of showing non-commitment to projects initiated by their predecessors which consequently results in faulty educational budget.
The focus of this research therefore, is to examine the influence of budgeting on the administration of secondary schools in Jigawa state in terms of staffing, staff development, provision of instructional facilities, provision of welfare/health facilities and provision of games /recreational facilities.
1.3 Objectives of the study
The study was set to achieve the following objectives:
- determine the influence of budgeting on staffing in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- examine the influence of budgeting on staff development programmes in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- ascertain the influence of budgeting on the provision of instructional facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- assess the influence of budgeting on the provision of welfare facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state; and
- determine the influence of budgeting on the provision ofrecreational facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state.
1.4 Research Questions
The following research questions were posed:
- Does budgeting influence staffing in secondary schools in Jigawa State?
- Does budgeting influence staff development programmes in secondary schools in Jigawa
State?
- Does budgeting influence provision of instructional facilities in secondary schools in
Jigawa State?
- Does budgeting influence the provision of welfare facilities in secondary schools in
Jigawa State?
- Does budgeting influence the provision of recreational facilities in secondary schools in
Jigawa State?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
The following null hypotheses were formulated for this study:
- There is no significant difference in the opinions of teachers, principals and supervisors(respondents) on the influence of budgeting on staffing in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- There is no significant difference in the opinions of respondents on the influence of budgeting on staff development programmes in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- There is no significant difference in the opinions of respondents on the influence of budgeting on the provision of instructional facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state;
- There is no significant difference in the opinions of respondents on the influence of budgeting on the provision of welfare/health facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state; and
- There is no significant difference in the opinions of respondents on the influence of budgeting on the provision of games/recreational facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state.
1.6 Significance of the Study
The study will be significant to the following people:
Budget Planners:The study would assist the budgeting planners to address the problems of budgetary allocation to secondary schools. It would also help in expounding the multitude exigencies of educational budgeting and effective school administrations.
Educational, Administrators:The study would equally explore various ways in which educational budgeting can influence school administration for efficient and solid educational development and would also help the school administrators to be able to solve the problem of inadequate teaching and learning facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa State.
Researchers and Students :The recommendations of this study could assist the researchers and students in devising practical problems associated with educational budgeting in Jigawa State.
Government of JigawaState:The study would assist in addressing the problem of inadequate staffing and staff development progarmmes in Jigawa State.
Educational Planners and Administrators:The research would finally be significant to educational planners and administrators in allocating more budgetary resources to improve the standard of secondary schools in Jigawa state in particular and the Nigeria as a whole.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This study is limited to “Influence of Budgeting on the Administration of Secondary Schools in Jigawa State”. It investigates how budgeting influences staffing, staff development programmes, provision of instructional facilities, provision of welfare/health facilities and provision of games/recreational facilities in secondary schools in Jigawa state. The study is limited to only public secondary schools within the twenty seven (27) local government areas in Jigawa State.
EFFECT OF BUDGETING ON THE MANAGEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN JIGAWA STATE, NIGERIA (2013-2017)