COMPLETE SCHOOL PROJECT TOPICS & MATERIALS :
CHAPTERS: Chapter 1-5
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ABSTRACT
The study was on assessment of the role of Parent Teachers’ Association (PTA) in funding of public secondary school education in Kaduna State. The statement of the problem was based on the fact that education is a capital intensive venture that requires huge sums of money. For this reason, government funding alone failed to meet up with the financial requirement to make it effective. As such, government have welcomed the participation of the private sector and other bodies like the PTA to contribute in funding secondary school Education. In spite of this, the sector has not been adequately funded over the years because the contribution of the PTA has not been encouraging. Hence this study was carried out with the purpose of assessing the PTA roles and contributions in that direction. The study adopted the Situational Leadership theory developed by Hersey and Blanchard in 1969. The study was guided by the survey research design. The population sample consisted of 110 respondents drawn from 19 out of the 40 (47.5%) Public secondary schools in the zone. Four research questions and four null hypotheses were formulated for the study and tested at 0.05 alpha level. A self-designed 4-point interval scale structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The mean score statistical method was used to analyze the data collected and the hypotheses were tested using the Z-score statistics. The results showed that the PTA funds in the provision of school physical facilities, teaching learning resources, and sustenance of school activities and programmes were grossly inadequate. However, the result also showed that the PTA has been faithful in the provision of personnel to the schools. The study further revealed that there is no significant differences between the mean score of PTA funding with those of the quality of education provided, academic performance of the students, availability of personnel and running of activities and programmes of the school. The study, therefore concluded that the level of involvement of the PTA in funding of public secondary school education in the state was poor and disheartening. Based on this, it was recommended among other things that the PTA and government should improve their support and funding of public secondary school education in the state. School principals were advised to always look for other avenues of sourcing funds to augment the government provision.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The Nigerian philosophy of education is based on the belief that education is an instrument for national development as well as a veritable tool for social, economic and political change (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2009:5). This is underscored by the fact that it transcends the social, cultural, political and the economic fabrics of the society. For education therefore, to be seen as successful, it requires huge investment either in terms of policy and implementation, infrastructure, human capacity development and of course funds which provide the purchasing capacity of the quality of education required and demanded by the various individuals of the society (Akpa, 2002).
The secondary education sector is a very crucial level of the early child education because people enter secondary school as children and leave it as young adults. Secondary school education is the education children receive after primary education and before the tertiary stage. Its broad goals include the preparation of individual children for useful living within the society and for higher education (National Policy on Education, 2014:14). For these reasons, huge investment is required in terms of funding so as to equip the sector with the adequate financial and material resources needed for the improvement of its quality and access towards the attainment of the set down goals of education and the much needed national development.
Educational funding in the context of this study therefore, can be defined as the financial resources or money being invested on education and how these financial resources (money) are adequately being appropriated by the concerned authorities towards improving the quality of public secondary school education in Kaduna Zone and the state as a whole. As a matter of fact, the success of any school depends upon the facilities and resources available to it. Money is very important in this respect because by it, all other vital elements in the school including the school learning facilities like buildings; purchase of teaching–learning resources such as textbooks, computers etc.; employment and payment of salaries of school personnel (teachers) and the effective day-to-day running of the school activities and programmes, can effectively be executed (Aghenta, 1984).
Adequate funding of education plays a very crucial role in the provision of school physical facilities, teaching-learning resources, school personnel, school activities and programmes, which are indicators for measuring educational effectiveness and achievement. This is because they are infrastructural facilities that when properly utilised may tremendously improve the quality of education.
By explanation, School physical facilities are those things that actually exist and can facilitate teaching and learning in school. They may include the school buildings like administrative offices, staffrooms, classrooms, staff-quarters, stores, laboratories, libraries, workshops plants & equipment, dormitories, school playgrounds, assembly/examination halls and various other equipment (Ajayi in Kittuu, 2012).
School teaching and learning resources are materials such as text-books, audio-visual materials, computer soft & hardware systems, writing materials and other electronic devices that teachers can use to assist students to cope with their learning challenges in the classroom (British-Columbia Government, 2013). While School Personnel on the hand, are the people employed or hired to teach the students and offer other services towards the smooth day-to-day running of the school. They may include: the teachers; principals; guidance counsellors & psychologists; health and social workers such as nurses, dispensers etc.; clerks; cleaners and other supporting staff who work actively towards improving education and achieving the set down goals of secondary school education (Kituu, 2012).
School activities and programme, are those things that provide students the opportunity to participate actively outside the traditional school period. These are also called co-curricular or extra-curricular activities. They may include excursions or fieldtrips, games & sports, essay & recitation competitions, arts & crafts, modelling, exhibitions, concerts, folksongs & singing competitions, clubs & society activities, school debates and dramatization, school Annual Speech and Prize giving day ceremonies, just to mention but a few. All these when adequately funded, would tremendously improve the quality of public secondary school education (Aggrawal in Kituu, 2012).
It is however important to note here that the expansion of secondary students’ enrolment in Nigeria since the attainment of independence followed by the enrolment explosion of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) Scheme in 1976 and the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme in recent years, has made secondary school education a thorny responsibility for government alone to shoulder (Jaiyeoba and Atanda, 2003). Consequently, the Federal Republic of Nigeria (2009:65) in its National Policy on Education states clearly that “financing of education is a joint responsibility of government and the private sector” and that in this connection, individuals and other organisations such as the Parent Teachers’ Associations (PTAs) are to be actively involved. But unfortunately, the public secondary school education system generally in Kaduna state and particularly Kaduna Zone appears to be suffering from a myriad of problems and series of setbacks due to poor or inadequate funding of the sector by government and the unwilling negative attitudes of parents and the PTA who are supposed to be greatly concerned about matters of their children/wards’ education and developments by contributing immensely.
Sadly, most of the various school Parent Teachers’ Associations have not been able to perform their role effectively as expected of them by the society. A personal observation during visits to some of the public schools in the study area revealed that there is very inadequate provision of funds and short supply of infrastructural facilities and learning equipment in the schools. The school buildings are dilapidated and are in very bad conditions too. There is short or no supply of basic textbooks in many subjects. Neither are there computers and other vital teaching and learning facilities in the schools. In some schools, you hardly can find enough qualified teachers to teach special and very important science subjects at the basic school level as well as subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and some other very useful subjects at the Senior School level. It is not unusual now to hear teachers complaining in some of these public secondary schools that chalk, which is now obsolete and an old fashion, is lacking in these public schools. The teachers sometimes only do manage to teach the students any how because they cannot effectively improvise everything or some of the basic teaching and learning resources used in teaching their students. There are cases of high staff turnover in many of these schools due to the poor condition of service and remuneration of the staff as such retaining them to work under these poor conditions, is very difficult. The economic hardship currently being experienced in our challenging society make them to move out to the labour market for greener pastures. Those of them who may manage to stay or remain on the job can hardly put in their best due to the inadequate supply of school facilities and teaching-learning resources to meet up with the demands of the students’ population. Most of the schools are short staffed, as such the school management may not find it easy to run the academic activities and programmes of the school effectively. This is why in some schools for example agricultural science teachers, biology teachers or a teachers in other subjects like the humanities, arts or vocational departments are sometimes assigned mathematics, physics, chemistry to teach, as the case may be. Therefore the quality of education supplied in such cases would obviously be diluted bringing down the standard of education drastically. This of course leads to mass examination failure. In many schools the students are congested in the classrooms as such, some of them are compelled to sit on the floor to take their lessons and even write their examinations due to lack of enough seats. This situation affects teaching and learning seriosly, besides the fact that the students’ uniforms and books become very dirty and untidy.
Furthermore, a visit to any of these public secondary schools in the zone, one may rarely find any school physical facility such as a classroom block, an examination/assembly hall, dormitory, laboratory, library, computer room or ICT Centre, school sport ground, workshop or any plant constructed by the PTA of the school as its project in support of the children’s academic activities in the school. It is also disheartening to hear that even the traditional one hundred naira (N100.00) only, charged per a student per term as a compulsory PTA levy, some parents hardly or do not pay for their children at all. This signifies that they do not even care or understand the role of parents and the PTA in the funding of public secondary school education generally and particularly in their domain.