ABSTRACT
This work studied the budgetary allocation to secondary education in Edo state, Nigeria with special emphasis on Oredo Local government area for the year 2014/2015. This exercise was carried out due to the myriad of problems bedeviling secondary education. The study had four key objectives which it sought to realize. These are to unravel the gap between actual and estimated expenditures, to identify if there is budgeted practice in secondary schools in Edo state, to find out if the budgeted revenue corresponds with the actual revenue and finally to find out how budgetary allocations can be managed five research questions were raised to guide the study. These are: is there budgetary allocation to secondary education?, is there gap between budgeted expenditure and actual expenditure?, is there a gap between expected income and actual income?, does secondary education generate revenue for the state?, what proportion of principals perceived budgetary allocation as participative?, the descriptive survey research design was adopted. The researcher made use of both primary and secondary sources of data to generate data used for the study.
The structured questionnaire was used by the researcher to obtained the primary data while online sources and governments documents served as sources of secondary data. These data were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentage. The researcher made several findings, out of which was that there was no budgetary practice in secondary schools in Edo state, the principals do not play an active role in the preparation of the state governments budget for secondary education.
The researcher subsequently recommended the following policy actions by the state government, the principals should play an active role in the preparation of the state governments budgetary allocations to secondary education and budgetary practice should be encouraged in secondary schools.
