DATA MANAGEMENT PRACTICES OF HEAD TEACHERS IN KOSOFE EDUCATION ZONE OF LAGOS STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

One of the most serious setback to educational development in Nigeria is none availability of data or lack of authenticity where available Nwagwu, 2003). In the blue print put forward by the implementation committee on the National Policy on Education (2004) it was noted that:

Difficulties are encountered in Nigeria in obtaining such basic data like the population of students, the population of teachers, the number of instructional materials available in schools, tile number of school building to be renovated and many others (lgwe, 2004). The state ministries of education lack accurate data which affects its policies and programmes and this is as a result of fabricated data supplied to the ministry by the school head teachers (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2004). According to Ikpe (2002), statistical data on educational expenditure are not always available and if available, they do not give a sufficient breakdown to make the data valuable for most planning purposes in the ministry of education. Uyanga (1993), opined that educational planners all over the developed economics of the world, sets future educational target based on objectives identification, peoples aspiration, problems of the society, needs and gaps in the field of education. This is made possible through a careful examination of the past and present efforts of stakeholders in education. In the absence of data, the said examination degenerates into “the rule of thumb”. Aghenta (2000), put it (hat most data obtained from head teachers are not factual but ambiguous, they are not accessible on demand and this has caused failures in some programmes carried out by the government. The administrators of the current Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme needs accurate data to be able to plan, organize and administer the programmes effectively. They are bound to take various decisions which should he useful to the children, school system and the society. This is decision sometimes becomes impossible in the context of accurate data. From the above observation it is imperative that there is need for data management awareness to the head teachers who are the custodians of data in their various schools in Nigeria.

Data are simply referred to as statistics. Data are numerical measures of phenomena and they are used in the process of scientific decision making. Data are of common occurrence