Budgeting and school plant development

BUDGETING AND SCHOOL PLANT DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Planning Programming and Budgeting System originated from U.S, introduced by U.S department of defense in 1965. It then spread to other sectors including education. Budgeting is crucial for implementation of school development plans. Budgeting necessitate education reforms in U.S. A when Bill Clinton called for retesting of teachers skills including on finance, (Ngida, 2003). This lead to the determination of teacher’s managerial abilities necessitating capacity building to those found with low ability, resulting in effective implementation of development plans.

Budgeting revealed irregular financial management practices like that in Britain when Collean Mc Cabe used school fund to pay for her Lavin lifestyle. West Africa countries prepare their budgets and read on the same day. This contains proposal of revenue and expenditure of their resources. In response to the need for

skilled     manpower    on    budgeting,   Nigeria    established    Nigeria   Education

Management Institute (NEMI) to train all managers and other education staff. Its function include designing, providing, assembling, preparing and maintaining staff training materials and equipment for use. South-south region Education Officer makes it mandatory to receive each secondary schools budget for approval by the end of every year for use in the subsequent year, South-south region DEO circular (2012).

The problem of delay in implementation of school projects is a global phenomenon. Public school facilities in the US are in dire need of improvement. The construction of most buildings dates back to the 1950s, not only have the facilities aged considerably, but student’s demographics and educational mandates have changed as well (National Center, 2008).

Resources continue to be a challenge especially in the face of current economic situation. There are districts that were stated to begin capital improvement projects and have put these on hold due to fiscal challenge they are facing. Education leaders, planners and designers are challenged to direct their school communities in articulating the educational goals they have for their children and demonstrating that informed facility planning and design assists in meeting these goals (Uline, 2007). Similarly majority of schools in Pakistan had problems such as shortage of furniture, lack of science laboratories, inadequate IT facilities, inadequate buildings; shortage of classrooms, inadequate of light, drinking water and toilet facilities, thus serious need for school improvement in terms of missing physical facilities to meet the actual needs and inadequate facilities in Pakistan and other states. The state of infrastructural decay in many secondary schools in

Nigeria is a manifestation of poor implementation of development plans, (Ahmed, 2003) revealed that in most of the nations secondary schools teaching and learning takes place under a most unconducive environment; lacking basic materials and thus hinders the fulfillment of educational objectives.

Assaf and Al-Hejji (2006) found that only 36% of construction projects were implemented within the scheduled implementation dates and that the average time over run was between 10% to 30%. Odeyinkaand Yusuf ( 2002) have shown that seven out of ten projects surveyed in Nigeria suffer delay in implementation.

Ogunlana and Promkuntong (1996) carried out study on construction delay in

Thailand schools and got similar result.

Al-Momani (2000) conducted a quantitative analysis in construction delay in Jordan schools which revealed the same state of affairs. Essenwa (2004) studied delays in Hong Kong construction projects. In Uganda, in 2007, there was a focus on tackling corruption in the education sector with organizations working to create awareness of corruption in the government service delivery as far as project implementations are concerned, corrupt district educational officials, headteachers and building contractors were exposed for misappropriating public funds as a result of budget work initiatives, Derenzio (2006).

In South Africa, the schools act (1996) gave decision-making powers to School Management Teams (SMTs) defined as internal management groups that include the principal, deputy head and department heads. These groups are responsible for daily and annual management and decision-making. The schools act also created School Governing Bodies (SGBs) that include the principal and elected

representative, parents, teachers, non-teaching staff and pupils. In South Africa, as in Zambia and Nigeria conflict arise between governance bodies. Parents fund almost half of all expenditure in most government-aided schools (Bernell and Sayed, 2002) and they battle with SGBs and SMTs over school management of

infrastructure projects.

Budgeting is programming and planning with the estimate of the amount of money to be received and the amount of money to be spent in a specified period in order to achieve educational objectives. According to Owler& Brown (1989), budgeting is a plan quantified in monetary terms and approved prior to defined period of time, usually showing planned income to be generated for expenditure to be incurred during the period and capital to be employed to attain a given objective.

Whereas Mbiti (2007) defined budgeting as annual projected estimates of income and expenditure in request to a given organization, he further explains that budgets are comprehensively thought plans on various sources of income. Estimated amount from each source and the anticipated expenditure categorized according to different cost centres (vote heads). But De Rensio (2006) says it is a document that details expenditure requirements of an institution, prioritizes the expenditure and groups the same under suitable vote-head prescriptions. From the above definitions common features are income, expenditure and time, it can be summarized as an outline showing sources of income areas of expenditure in a specified period. Budget is an important statement that any government has to make, Mulwa (2008). It gives direction of national policy, the plan of action, and the cost implication of programmes. It identifies resources required to implement a planned project it serves as indication of what the government is doing and objectives it is pursuing. It outlines activities that the government has in pursuit of development goals. It highlights the potential government response to economic disturbances in the short term and it indicates who will be direct and indirect beneficiary.  From the above definition, it is clear that any budget must have three key components as; a programme plan, an expenditure plan and income plan. (Orslosky et al, 1984) explains that a budget should be based on realistic data, should confirm to government documents policies, staffs programme plans, community desires and student needs.

Expenditure is classified into recurrent and development expenditure, (Lodiaga, 1996). Recurrent expenditure constitutes greater percentage of the budget and deals with operational expenses of the organization like personal emolument (PE), electricity, water and conservancy (EW&C) boarding equipment and store (BES). Local traveling and transport (LT&T), contingencies, repair, maintenance (RM), which are determined by growth of the school, (Okumbe, 1998) while development expenditure refers to those incurred on capital items such as building, furniture equipment and vehicles that are made at irregular intervals and last for more than a year (Pierce II, Robinson, 1991 and Garrison, 1991).

Although it was a new concept in developing countries, it is steadily gaining ground. Development plan is a carefully considered as arrangement for carrying out some future activities. Planning is therefore a rational process of preparing a set of decisions for future action geared towards achieving goals and objectives, Damon (1998), while school development refers to construction of building, running school farm and curriculum implementation, school development plan can therefore be summarized as carefully considered arrangement for constructing school buildings, running school farm and delivering academic services. Planning, programming and budgeting system (PPBS) is a budgeting process in which an educational organization weighs and analyzes the various means of achieving objectives and making optimum choices among competing alternatives (Okumbe,

2000).

Budgeting requires competent budget committee members equipped with budgeting skills, monitoring abilities, evaluation skills, procurement knowledge project identification abilities and decision making abilities. Good budgeting also considers resources (human, financial and materials) monitoring and evaluation must also form component of budgetary so as to assist find out if the implementation is in the right track or not and come out with corrective measures. Good budgeting should provide for virement procedure to avoid wastage and lead to completion of planned projects.

School development includes construction of building and running of school farm. Curriculum implementation is another aspect of development. It include subjects coverage, procurement of learning / teaching materials and other service provision like guidance and counseling, safety and security to mention but a few.

In short development refers to improvement of an institution through acquisition of new materials, facilities, required knowledge, skills and attitude or renovation of the existing ones.

1.2 Statement of the problem

In the background, there are cases cited by various researchers like; (Ahmed 2003, Ogunlana and PromKuntong, 1996), (Essenwa 2004) and many others about project implementation delays in Nigeria, Thailand and Hong Kong respectively. They emphasize that timely delivery of projects within budget and to the level of quality standard specified by the client is an index of successful project delivery. Failure to achieve targeted time, budgeted cost and specified quality result in various unexpected negative effects on the project.

Inspite ofNigeria government’s initiated free education fund that are disbursed directly to school accounts, the institutions still experience slow development, contrary to the government expectation, South-south region schools are not exception.

In South-south region, the main concern was on school development projects some were initiated with little or no consultation between school administrators and other stakeholders like students and community members. Schools initiate expensive and prestigious projects like halls and avoid students centered philosophy, which is in agreement with Daily Nation (23^rd June, 2003).

Of the schools studied, 40% do not complete their development plans in stipulated period and cost. At the same time the quality of the project, hardly reach the expected level. There are many cases of school disrepair witnessed. This prompted a management workshops which was organized and carried out in March 2012 that involved 15 principals from South-south region to acquaint the heads on the preparation and management of strategic plan that had budgeting as one of its components,  Mr.Omondi DQASO South-south region Education Office (2012).

Since budgeting is a very crucial stage in implementation of school development plans, it is important that a study be conducted to analyze budgeting and its effects on implementation of public secondary school development plans in South-south region

district.

1.3 Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of budgeting on implementation of school development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region

District.

1.4 Objectives of the study

This study was guided by the following objectives:-

1. To examine how the competence of budget committee members affect the implementation of the development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region.
2. To establish how resource allocation determines the implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region.

• To analyze how utilization of monitoring and evaluation findings influence the implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region.

1. To establish how virementof the budgetary allocations affect the implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region

District.

1.5 Research questions

The study sought to answer the following research questions:-

1. How does competence of budget committee members affect the

implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region?

1. In what ways does resource allocation contribute to implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region? iii.How do monitoring and evaluation findings affect implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region?

iv.To what extent does virement of budgetary allocation affect the implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region

District?

1.6 Significance of the study

The study findings may be beneficial in a number of ways. Its recommendations may benefit various educational institutions like secondary schools, educational offices (county and sub-county), and capacity building institutions like NEMI and personnel’s involved in decision –making, policy and implementation by creating knowledge on budgeting and how it relates to implementation of development plans in public secondary schools in South-south region. It may help school administrators to improve in the area of implementation of development plan. The administrators may sue the information to fill in the gaps in their schools. Educational policy makers may be enabled to come up with education policies on minimum qualification needed for those involved in school management in general so as to improve quality of budgeting committee. The Nigeria Education Staff Research Institute (KESI) renamed NEMI (Nigeria Education Management Institute)may find it useful when planning courses on management of development plans in educational institutions.  The body (NEMI) may identify areas of weaknesses that need further training and plan for training school managers. Teacher training colleges and universities may find it useful for restructuring their curriculum relevant to potential schools principals (managers). It may also highlight areas of budgeting process, which require further investigation and hence, the upcoming researchers may use it for further research.

1.7 Limitation of the study

Respondents had different perceptions. It was not easy to control their attitudes. They may have given answers that were socially acceptable to avoid offending either researcher or any other authority. Employees may mistake research for fault finding. To minimize the negative perceptions, the researcher assured the respondents of nil consequential actions towards their respondents. Researcher may not have anticipated and captured all the activities, which occurred at specific periods of the project during the visits by the researcher. The researcher recorded the issues that emerged during data collection and were not captured in the questionnaire for his comments at the end (reporting time).

1.8 Delimitation of the study

The study focused only on public secondary schools within the boundaries of South-south region. It was strictly about budgeting and not other aspects of financial management or auditing only T.S.C teachers (head of departments) who had served for one year and above in the department were part of the respondents. The other respondents included BOM members, Bursar/ accountants, and principals.

1.9 Basic assumption of the study

The following assumptions were made in the study;

• Problems in project implementation experienced in schools are partly attributed to poor budgeting.
• All schools have budgets for their development plans
• All educational stakeholders are involved in the budgeting process.

1.10 Definition of the significant terms

Accountable,state of being responsible and answerable for the discharge of

duties.

Board of governors,this is a managerial body in secondary schools provided by education act Cap 211.

Administration of budget,this refers to the implementation of the budget

Budget,is specific plan for implementing organizational objectives, policies and programmes for a given period of time.

Budget committee,is a body entrusted with a project implementation

Budgeting,is a process of preparing estimates/statements of expenditure and income, where as

Implementation, means the execution of the activities stipulated in the project plan.

Monitoring, is the assessment of performance

Parents Teachers Association (PTA), an organization formed by subsidiary legislation of 1993 to solicit fund for establishing and maintaining physical

facilities.

Plan, is all the arrangements required for the attainment of project objectives. Policies, are guidelines set by the organization to set the direction of the project plan.

Project monitoring and evaluation, represents an ongoing activity to track project progress against planned task

Public Secondary School, are post primary schools which are developed, equipped and staffed by the public funds from government, parents or community.

Resources, this refers to finances, human capital time and other work materials and equipment required for execution of project activities.

Virement procedure, is the process of transferring fund from a vote head with excess money to another with less money.

1.11 Organization of the study

This research report contains five chapters. Chapter one comprise the following subheadings; background to the study, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, limitation of the study, delimitation of the study, basic assumption of the study and definition of significant terms.

Chapter two presents literature review composed of influence of; competence of budget committee on implementation of school development, resource allocation on implementation of secondary school development plans, monitoring and evaluation on implementation of school development plans, virement on implementation of school development plans, related research literatures related to implementation of secondary schools development plans, summary of the literature review, theoretical framework and conceptual framework.

Chapter three is on research methodology comprising of; research design, target population, sampling techniques and sample size, data collection, research instruments, research procedure and data analysis techniques.

Chapter four gives the presentation of results and discussions. Lastly, chapter five is about summary, conclusions, recommendations of the researcher’s findings and suggestion of areas for further research.

BUDGETING AND SCHOOL PLANT DEVELOPMENT