The role of decision making with respect to primary education budget request, approval and resource allocation

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of decision making bodies with respect to primary education budget request, approval and resource allocation. The major task of the study were: Firstly, to identify the main bodies which are involved in the process of decision making for primary education budget and resource allocation. Secondly, to investigate and analyse the roles of decision making bodies in formulating primary education budget. Thirdly, to identify how decision making bodies influence the budget for primary education. Fourthly, the study aimed at examining empirically, the relationship between budget requests, approval and allocation of resources for the utilizing units. The instruments of research were: documentary reviews, interviews and questionaires. Content analysis and regression analysis techniques were used to analyse the findings. The major findings of the study were the following:-(1) The main bodies of decision making included school committee, village council, Ward Development Committee; District management Team, District Development Committee and Full District Council; Regional Development Committee, Regional Management Team, Regional Political Executive Committee; Prime Minister's Office, Ministry of Local Government, Zonal Budget Team, Inter Ministerial Technical Committee, Planning Commission, Treasury, Cabinet, and Parliament. (ii) The major roles of decision making bodies consisted of technical and advisory roles. The technical roles are conducted by technical bodies such as; DMT, RMT, ZBT, IMTC and PC. The advisory roles which includes approving and allocation of resources is done by DDC, FDC, Treasury, Cabinet and Parliament. The roles of these bodies are of complementary nature and they overlap in their advisory function. (iii) There were no explicit criteria which were used by decision making bodies to determine the size of primary budget. (iv) The size of budget was determined by national budget ceilings and not by priority accorded to by decision making bodies at different levels. (v) There was no relationship between budget requested, approved and allocated to the primary education sector. However, the study showed that of the two regress ants used i.e. approved and requested funds, they are statistically significant at the 5 per cent level of test; while the allocated funds variable was only significant at the P-0.315 which cannot be accepted. The overall fit as indicated by coefficient of multiple determination was high (R2 = 0.93). This showed that the two independent variables explain 0.93 of the variation in the dependent variable. Therefore approved funds variable is an important variable used by decision making bodies in determining allocation to spending units.