Managing finances in the public basic schools in the Kwaebibirim Municipality

Abstract

The study examined how public basic school headteachers as the target population manage finances in public basic schools in the Kwaebibrem Municipality within the Eastern Region of Ghana. Drawing on the Budgetary Theory, the study also assessed the challenges headteachers face, the effect of the challenges on managing public school finances as well as strategies to mitigate the challenges. The study adopted the quantitative approachanddescriptive research design using the stratified sampling technique to sample35 respondents from the population size of 115 public basic school head teachers in the municipality. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from the respondents and processed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 23. Using the mean, standard deviation scores, and regression analysis, the study found accounting challenges, budgetary challenges, auditing challenges, and professional incompetence as the challenges that headteachers face when managing public school finances. In addition, the headteachers manage public school funds by ensuring that they prepare budget before utilizing funds, expenditure is based on budget, School Management Committee (SMC) approves school budget before expenditure, headteachers account for school funds through auditing, headteachers keep records of financial transactions and comply with Public Financial Management Act, 2016.Also, the challenges werefound to have a significant negative relationship with the management of publicschool finances in the Kwaebibirem Municipality. In furtherance, the findings of the study revealed that training in auditing effectiveness, encouraging capacity building in accounting, and organizing a workshop on financial management practices for head teachers among others are the strategies that can be used to mitigate the challenges of managing public school finances. It was concluded that accounting challenges, budgetary challenges, auditing challenges, and professional challengeare key contributorstothe poor management of public -school finances among headteachers in the Kwaebibrem Municipality. The study recommended the government through the Ministry of Education and, Ghana Education Service, establish a strong financial management curriculum to guarantee that serving and assistant headteachers are appropriately and efficiently taught to handle school finances. It further recommended that the management of Ghana Education Service should hire extra auditors to guarantee that school books are audited on schedule.