MANAGEMENT OF NIGERIAN EDUCATION:
PROJECT MONITORING AND SCHOOL PLANT
MAINTENANCE
VOL.2
Edited by
DR. A.A. OLAGBOYE
and
DR. J.O. FADIPE
A PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATIONAL
PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION, (NIEPA, NIGERIA) ONDO,
NIGERIA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface………………………………………………………. iv
Part I
MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF EDUCATION IN
NIGERIA
Chapter 1.
Basic Concepts of Monitoring and Evaluation
of Educational Projects.
—
Dr. P.K. Ojedele…………………. 1
Chapter 2.
Designing Monitoring and Evaluation
Programmes for Educational Projects.
—
Dr. E.E. Oluchukwu……………… 9
Chapter 3.
Indicators of Educational Systems Performance.
—
Dr. A.A. Olagboye………………….
Chapter 4.
Accountability in Education: The Case of
Nigeria —
Dr. D.O. Durosaro………….
Chapter 5.
The Role of Management Information System
in Monitoring and Evaluation of Educational
Projects. —
Dr. J.O. Fadipe…….
45
Part II
SCHOOL PLANT MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA.
Chapter 6.
School Plant Management Practice in Nigeria:
Trends, Issues and Problems.
—
Dr. D.O. Durosaro…………………..
Chapter 7.
Promoting School Plant Maintenance Culture
in the Nigerian School System.
—
Dr. A.A. Olagboye………………….
Chapter 8.
Modern Strategies of School Plant Maintenance
—
Dr. J.O. Fadipe………………………
Chapter 9.
Maintaining School Plant for Educational
Effectiveness and Efficiency in a Depressed
Economy.
—
Dr. P.K. Ojedele…..
Chapter 10.
School Plant Planning and Implementation.
—
Dr. E.E. Oluchukwu………………….
27
37
53
65
73
83
91
Chapter 4
Accountability in Education: The Case of Nigeria
By
Dr. D.O. Durosaro
Introduction
In modern time, the educational enterprise in Nigeria had grown into a
huge venture engaging more men, money and material resources of the nation
than any other sector of the economy. This is why the issues and problems of
education are probably more visible today than they had been. Both Government
and the generality of the people now show greater commitment to education
viewing it as the master-key to rapid socio-economic and political advancement.
Between 16% and 22% of Government Budget goes to Education (Aghenta
1989) and between 25% and 45% of family income goes to Secondary
Education (Durosaro 1997). Hence, there is an increasing social demand on
educational managers to expand facilities; to provide more supportive services;
to provide equal educational opportunities; to reorder priorities; to ensure greater
productivity and new programmes; to respond to more individualized needs and
to provide software necessary to upgrade business decisions in their own areas
of responsibility.
Unfortunately, in the face of this social pressure on education, the
nations financial resources had shown a declining trend thus leading to a cut
back in the nations expenditure on some social service sub-sectors like
education. This situation calls for prudence and accountability in all facets of
our national life including education. To ensure these, there had been the
introduction of such economic concepts like -investment, returns, efficiency,
effectiveness and accountability. Accountability could be viewed as the
recording and reporting of the activities and events affecting personnel,
facilities, material or money of an organization and its programmes. Education
is the process of cognitive, affective and psychomotor development of a child.
Owing to the shortfall in the funding of education by Government,
parents are being called upon to give more financial assistance to schools than
before. Thus, parents who in the past took for granted that the schools were
doing the best they could, are now demanding that schools account for the
failure of their children through the Parents/Teachers Association (PTA). On the
part of Government, to ensure adequate accountability, some administrative
machinery had been put in place to monitor operation in the schools.
38
Management of Nigerian Education: Project Monitoring and School Plant Maintenance
The whole essence of supervision, monitoring and evaluation in the
educational system borders on ensuring accountability in the system. Hence, the
institutional managers have to report, explicate and defend the procedures as
well as justify means adopted in delivering services perceived as needed by the
people to the people.
This paper humbly presents a brief attempt to highlight the conceptual
framework of accountability in education with a view to tracing the line of
accountability in education as well as drawing out the significance of
accountability to the educational system.
Conceptual Framework and Typologies of Accountability in Education
A quick look at one of the common dictionaries reveals that the term
accountability means having responsibility for or reporting to others on
something, usually fund, material or personnel utilised in an organization
(Goetz, 1988). This definition connotes that anyone managing an organization
should be responsible and ready to give periodic account of how effective and
efficient the system had performed over a given period of time. Specifically,
accountability in education is concerned with determining what records are to be
kept, how such records will be maintained in terms of the procedures,
methodology and forms to be used, recording classification and summarization
of activities of events, analyzing and interpreting the recorded data, preparing
and issuing reports and statements which reflect conditions as of a given time
(Adams et al., 1967; Candoli et al, 1978).
No doubt, the task of accounting, auditing and reporting have been
associated with the business of formal education since inception. But in recent
times with the incorporation of the concept of accountability, these tasks have
been expanded and are now being used to provide necessary data and their
interpretation to determine costs and benefits within the financial foundations of
educational institutions. The educational managers now use the concept to
describe (a) the nature, sources and amounts of revenue inputs, (b) the
appropriation of revenues to various programmes and (c) the actual expenditures
in these programmes. These data are then related to educational outputs or
educational benefits so that the citizens can understand the financial implications
of educational decisions and the programme implications of financial decisions.
Thus, the educational managers are accountable to the public and the public has
information on which to exercise its decision-making power in areas of financial
policy. Consequently, to aid the process of accountability in education, the
administrators of the system should:
Accountability in Education: The case of Nigeria
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
39
identify the goals and objectives of the system;
determine the validity and relevance of such goals and
objectives
assess periodically how fully such goals and objectives have been
achieved;
identify which factors assisted or hampered goal achievement in
the
system and
design strategies to improve performance.
In Nigeria, to aid the control of the educational system, the Government
handed down a national policy on education which specifies the structure,
curricula, goals and objectives of the various sub-systems. The concept of
accountability thus implies that those engaged in operationalizing the system
should constantly evaluate and demonstrate that the resources in terms of
human, material and physical facilities, devoted to education are being properly
utilised to achieve such stated goals.
There are various taxonomies and typologies of accountability in
education. For ease of comprehension, one could quickly identify five major
types in this paper. These are Product/output accountability, input
accountability, process accountability, Goal Accountability, and Accountability
for means and enabling environment for education.
Product accountability relates to the evaluation of teaching
effectiveness and the extent to which the teacher achieves the expected outcome
of teaching and the classroom interaction.
Input accountability concerns the evaluation of the extent of adequacy
of supervision, monitoring and evaluation of the operation of the system.
Goal accountability relates to the evaluation of the selection, definition
and prioritization of the goals and objectives of education.
Accountability for means and enabling environment refers to the
evaluation of the extent to which the general public had cooperated in providing
the required resources for education and for creating the right atmosphere for the
pursuit of education in their state.
40
Management of Nigerian Education: Project Monitoring and School Plant Maintenance
Line of Accountability in Education
In most countries, educational activities affect or are affected by
almost every individual in the nation in one way or another. Thus in the
programme of accounting for the progress of educational system each
person has a place in the scheme of things. Each individual is responsible
to or for someone else and for specific activities towards goal
achievement. Figure 1 presents a brief analogy of the line of
accountability in the Nigerian educational system. As shown on the
figure, accountability in education starts from the classroom teacher. He
is accountable for the expected outcome of his teachings and other
classroom interaction with the students within the framework of the
overall national educational objectives. The teacher is accountable
directly to the institutional administrator. The institutional administrators
(i.e. Headmasters, Principals, Provosts, Rectors and Vice Chancellors)
are accountable for resource utilization and output achieved by their
institution at any given point in time. The institutional administrators are
accountable directly to the various statutory organs set up to coordinate
their affairs such as the National Primary Education Commission
(NPEC) for primary level institutions, National Commission for Colleges
of Education (NCCE), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE)
for Polytechnics and the National Universities Commission (NUC) for
universities.
These statutory bodies are in turn accountable to the Minister of
Education for selection and employment of staff to the institutions and
for instructional programme inputs to aid the realization of goals.
The Minister of Education along with his Ministry is accountable
to the Presidency for the supervision, monitoring and evaluation of the
process of Education in the nation to ensure that no aspect runs counter
to the other or against the objectives in the national policy on education.
The Presidency in turn is accountable to the National Assembly for the
selection, definition and prioritization of goals and objectives of
education. The National assembly is also accountable to the generality of
their electorates for the means in terms of funding and enabling
environment conducive for educational pursuit.
Accountability in Education: The case of Nigeria
41
Accountable to
Accountable for
People of Nigeria
Means and enabling
environment
National Assembly
Policy formulation and
legislation
The Presidency
Minister of education (FME)
NUC, NCCE, NBTE, NPEC
Selection, definition and
Prioritizing goals and
objectives
(Goal accountability)
Supervision, monitoring and
Evaluation of process
(Process accountability)
Selection, employment of staff
and instructional programme
inputs for realization of goals or
(input accountability)
Institutional Administrators
Resource utilization and output
accountability
Teachers
Expected outcome of Teaching
and classroom Operation (i.e.
Product accountability)
Fig. 1: Line of accountability for Education in Nigeria.
Source: Adapted from Lulsegged, A.H.M. (1980) The supervisor concerned
with accountability in Education, UNDP/UNESCO project, University of
Ibadan, p. 6.
42
Management of Nigerian Education: Project Monitoring and School Plant Maintenance
Conclusion
Accountability is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. By
evaluating and indicating how effectively and efficiently a given resource
allocation or teaching strategy had produced the desired outcome and by
diagnosing the reason for failure when failure occurs, product accountability
technique combined with proper supervision would help the school system to
improve. Accountability is a means by which valid and appropriate goals and
objectives are determined; the progress made towards their achievement is
measured; factors and conditions facilitating, or retarding outcome are assessed
and improvement of programmes planned. The main aim of accountability is the
improvement of the teaching and learning situation for the benefit of the
learners.
The factors hindering accountability in education in Nigeria include the
following.
1.
Poor record keeping in the educational system particularly in the
schools.
2.
Fraudulent practices owing to the existing poverty syndrome in
the country coupled with our poor value system.
3.
Poor mode of release of funds to the school system and
4.
Shortage of personnel' and facilities in the schools monitoring unit.
It is pertinent at this juncture to proffer the following suggestions as
guide to educational managers striving for accountability:
There is the need to ensure that the focus of accountability is more on
the process of instruction since this is the centre of the educational process and
the performance of students should form the basis of accountability.
There is also the need to share the effort of accounting in the school
with teachers and other school personnel.
The process of accountability should also provide for analysis,
interpretation and reporting of results and should also encourage
experimentation with new ideas, methods, techniques and materials.
There is also the need for the institutional administrators to cooperate
with teachers, school boards, ministry officials, parents and students to identify
goals and establish priorities and to measure the final outcome of the school
against such goals.
To aid proper accountability the school records should be adequately
kept and up-dated.
It is equally necessary to re-orientate our national economy to reduce
our poverty syndrome in order to discourage fraud.
Accountability in Education: The case of Nigeria
43
There is the need to release fund to schools promptly to prevent
handicapping school managers and the Monitoring Units should be provided
with adequate facilities and personnel to improve their operation. The unit could
recruit more hands from the experienced teachers in our schools and they could
even use peer-visits approach.
Accountability does not end until the educational manager makes
available the result and account of the evaluation to the appropriate body for
information, decision-making and improvement of the teaching learning
situation.
In any school system, the accountability system should be established
with the purposes of safeguarding public fund and properties from abuse;
meeting legal requirements, budget preparation and control, providing
information to guide administrative decisions and incur public confidence,
preparing local community, state and Federal Ministries of Education reports
and serving as a basis for research and analysis.
References
Aghenta, J.A. (1981) "Educational planning in Nigeria: Issues, problems and
strategies," The Educational Planner Vol. 1. No. 1.
Adams, D.K., O.M. Hill, A.R. Lichtenberger, J.A. Perkins and P.S. Shaw (1967)
Principles of public- school accounting, State Educational records and
Reports series: Handbook 11B, Washington D.C., U.S. Government
Printing Office, p. 260.
Durosaro, D.O. (1997) Parental Social class and rate of investment in secondary
education in Nigeria, paper presented at Annual Conference of the
Nigerian Academy of Education at Erunwa Ijebu-Ode (in Press).
Candoli, I.C., W.G. Hack, J.R. Ray and D.H. Stoller (1978) School business
Administration: A Planning approach, Boston Allyn and Bacon, Inc. p.
186.
Coombs, A.W. (1973) Educational Researcher, Florida University, September.
Goetz, P.W. (Ed.) (1988) The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago,
Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., Vol. 1.
Gronland, N.E., (1974) Determining accountability for classroom instruction,
New York, McMillan Publishing Co.
Lulsegged, A.H.M. (1980) The role of the supervisor concerned with
accountability in Education, UNDP/UNESCO Project, University of
Ibadan.
44
Management of Nigerian Education: Project Monitoring and School Plant Maintenance
Stakes, R.E. (1973) "School accountability Laws". The Journal of Educational
centre for the study of Evaluation, UCLA, Vol. 4 No. 1 Feb.