ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine the extent of relationship between utilization of integrative funding and effective administration of secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. Eight research questions and eight null hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlational design. The population of the study was 29,513, comprising 1410 principals and 28,103 teachers of public secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling techniques was used to arrive at the sample size of 982 respondents comprising 40 principals and 942 teachers of public secondary schools in three states of South East, Nigeria. The instrument for data collection were two-sets of self-structured questionnaire. The two sets of questionnaires were validated by three experts, two in Educational Administration and one in measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the research instrument was obtained using Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient for the eight clusters whose indices are 0.85, 0.75, 0.73, 0.73, 0.88, 0.76, 0.87, 0.87 respectively. The overall reliability indices for the two sets of questionnaire were 0.80 and 0.83. 950 Copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and analysed using linear regression to answer research questions and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to test hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results obtained indicated that there were high positive correlation between utilization of government budgetary allocation, utilization of funds from international bodies, utilization of funds from Alumni Associations, utilization of donations from philanthropic organizations, utilization of funds from Voluntary Agencies, utilization of donations from community efforts, utilization of PTA levy, management alternative strategies and effective administration of secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. Recommendations were made based on the findings that Government and policy makers should formulate policies that will ensure strict compliance to judicious utilization of budgetary allocation by principals since it correlates with effective administration. School administrators should source for funds from international agencies and ensure that such funds are adequately utilized. Schools should ensure healthy collaboration with Alumni Associations and ensure judicious utilization of the funds. School administrators should attract the assistance of philanthropies through lunching and sponsorship and ensure adequate utilization of such funds. The government and school administrators should seek the support and sponsorship of stakeholders like the voluntary agencies, the community efforts, Parents Teachers Association (PTA) levy in the funding of secondary schools and most importantly ensure adequate and judicious utilization of funds to achieve the set objectives of the schools. School administrators should continue to source for alternative strategies for financing secondary schools and also ensure adequate utilization of such funds. Above all from the findings of the study utilization of integrative funding has high positive correlation with effective administration. This underscores the fact that it is not just availability of funds but how these funds whether minimal, inadequate or otherwise are utilized is what affects effective administration. Therefore, the government from time to time should organise workshop, seminars, conferences for school administrators on management of funds.