Educational Funding as A Correlate of Students' Academic Achievement in Kwara State Secondary Schools

The current situation of secondary education in Kwara State suggests that things may get worse unless measures are taken to address the problem of underfunding. If this problem is not addressed, the outcome may negatively influence students’ academic achievement. This study therefore investigated educational funding as a correlate of students’ academic achievement in Kwara State secondary schools. The descriptive research design of the survey type was used in this study. The population for this study consisted of 18,109 teachers and students whose results were used in all public secondary schools in Kwara State. The sample for the study consisted of 600 teachers and students whose results were used in 60 public secondary schools in Kwara State. The sample was selected using multistage sampling procedure. An instrument tagged Educational Funding Questionnaire (EFQ) was used to collect relevant data for the study. The second instrument was an Inventory on Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination results. The face and content validity of the instruments were determined by Educational Management and Test and Measurements experts. The reliability of EFQ was determined through the test re-test method and correlation co-efficient value of 0.85 was obtained for EFQ. The responses obtained were collated and analysed using descriptive statistics while the hypotheses postulated were subjected to inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that Government funding, parent funding and institutional funding were significantly related to students’ academic achievement. It was recommended among others that parents should supplement government funding of secondary education through PTA and provision of needed facilities which could lead to better students’ academic achievement.

Keywords: Educational Funding, Students, Academic Achievement ,