Budgeting Practices in Senior High Schools in Ghana; A Comparative Study of some selected Schools in Ashanti Region

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Date
July, 2015
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Abstract
Senior High Schools in Ghana are beset with problems which are mostly financial in nature. Due to resource constraints, school managers find it difficult to get enough resources to run the schools smoothly. As a matter of fact, budgetary allocations from the Central Government through the Ghana Education Service to the schools are not enough and even hardly hit the schools‘ accounts on time. In the midst of these inadequacies, at times the little financial support that is offered the schools is mismanaged by school authorities. Therefore, in order to ensure judicious use of resources and minimize waste, there is the need to examine the budgeting practices of Senior High Schools in Ghana. The population of the study was the entire management and staff of the selected Senior High Schools. In selecting the schools, a convenience sampling method was used to select five Senior High Schools in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Due to the peculiar characteristics of the population, a purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of twenty respondents from the five selected Senior High Schools. Data was collected through the administration of questionnaires and unstructured interviews with respondents and a database created using Excel and SPSS package for the analysis. The research revealed that all the schools prepared budgets and implement budgets prepared; poor forecast of budget estimates and changing demands from the environment posed a challenge on school budget and not all the schools have budget committees in place. It is therefore recommended that, the Ghana Education Service sees to the setting up of budget Committees and Units in the schools. Moreover, budget estimates should be properly forecast to minimize the impact of changing demands from the environment on the budget. Finally, School managers should be taken through refresher courses in budget planning and execution for them to fully appreciate the important role budgets play in management of schools.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Accounting and Finance, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration (Accounting Option) ,
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