ACCOUNTING PRACTICES ADOPTED BY PRINCIPALS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SOUTHWEST, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study assessed accounting practices adopted by principals for administration of public secondary schools in Southwest, Nigeria. The study was guided by two objectives, research questions and hypotheses. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study, the population of the study was 3254, while the sample size was 650 respondents. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to arrive at the sample size. The instrument used for data collection was a selfstructured questionnaire titled “Principals’ Accounting Practices Questionnaire (PAPQ)”. The questionnaire is arranged in two clusters each with 7 items. The instrument was validated by three experts, two of the experts were from Educational Administration and Planning, one from Measurement and Evaluation, all from the Department of Educational Foundations and General Studies, Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi. The data collected were analyzed using Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) to answer the research questions. The interpretations of the results of the study were guided by the decision rule of a criterion mean of 2.50 and above for agreed, while mean that fell below 2.50 were disagreed. The hypotheses were tested using T-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings of the study were that there is no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the principals and bursars on the available sources of funds and financial transactions record keeping practices adopted by principals in the administration of public secondary schools in Southwest, Nigeria. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that the principals should harness more potentials, multi-sectorial partnership and sponsors such as (Companies, Banks, P.T.A, Industries and Private Organization) should support the school in area of funding and provisions of necessary materials for effective secondary schools administration to augment government’s efforts.