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
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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.