THE EFFECTS OF SCHOOL RESOURCE ALLOCATION ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Schools should formulate reasonable objectives and provide students with a proper learning environment. They should offer students balanced learning opportunities in all aspects of development, i.e moral, intellectual, physical, social, and aesthetic as well as nurture them to be responsible citizens. Therefore, resources have to be mobilized and allocated fairly so as to achieve the above stated roles of schools. Resources have to be allocated equitably to all schools for us to achieve the best results from a school as a society or a country at large. The study was focused on determining if the resources allocated to schools have any effects on students’ performance with a special focus on Kabwe District Secondary Schools. The study was both descriptive and causal in design. The study utilized primary data from the field and already processed secondary data by other authors. Questionnaires were used to obtain Primary data from these schools. The study used purposive sampling in choosing the appropriate sample size where homogeneous sampling was used to choose schools that may have the best information regarding resource allocation and student performance from Kabwe. SPSS and MS excel was used to analyze the data which was collected from the field. The study established that schools lack enough resources to support the conducive learning environments to significantly influence the performance of the learners in schools. The study also found that there has been an erratic funding in the past five years in as far as providing necessary resources to schools is concerned. It was also established that schools had not much powers in as far as allocation or sourcing of resources was concerned. In addition, most schools were not doing enough in using the little resources that were available and formulating strategies that maximises the use of little resources at their exposal. In light of the above, the government, through the ministry of education should strive to provide enough funding to all schools for them to be able to significantly influence the performance of the learners. The schools should also be resourceful and look for resources to cushion the erratic funding from the central government. Schools should have a say or powers in the allocation of resources, they must be consulted adequately so as to have a clear view on how best to allocate the available resources. Most importantly, the schools should prudently use the allocated resources to them so as to improve student performance.