Fund management practices of public second cycle educational institutions in the Central Region of Ghana

Abstract

The main ambition of most organizations today is to present good financial results that may have the impetus of propelling the organization into the realization of its grand objectives. One important part of this is to ensure an effective way of managing liquid capital or in other words fund management. The thrust of this document is to help improve the public sector financial management practices, with a particular reference to the second cycle institutions of Ghana Education Service. This is basically in consideration of the chunk of the national resources usually directed into the operations of the sector. Three different sources were used to extract the data. These included the use of questionnaire, personal interviews and official documentations. Questionnaires were sent to thirty second cycle schools and colleges, specifically to the key spending officers (headmaster/headmistress and the bursar). To make it possible for the respondents to express their thoughts beyond the asked questions, semi structured interviews were used. In addition to the questionnaire and the interviews, accessible official documents were utilized. One major conclusion from the analysis is that, the service has a great potential with fund management when adequate value is added to its fund managers and relevant staff and appropriate organizational environment is created.