Intervention Fund and Academic Performance of Primary School Pupils in Nigeria: Retrospective Study of Education Trust Fund

The study investigated utilisation of Education Trust Fund (ETF) financial resources as intervention fund and academic performance of public primary school pupils in the South-West, Nigeria. One research question was raised to guide the study, while two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey research design of the ex-post facto type was adopted for the study. 120 schools out of a total population of 10,576 public primary schools, selected through purposive and stratified sampling techniques formed the sample. Data generated from e-library of the Education Trust Fund (ETF), now Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) and Pupils' Academic Performance Proforma (PAPP) were used to collect data. Primary data obtained from the appropriated and audited accounts of the ETF were used to answer the research questions. Quantitative data were subjected to statistical analyses with the use of IBM-SPSS version 20 to test the hypotheses. The results of the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated that [F (5, 24) = .707 and P> .05] showing no significant difference in the funds allocated to public primary schools among the states of the South-West, Nigeria. Results of Pearson's Product Moment Correlation [r(5, N=720) =.273; P > .05] showed that the relationship between the utilisation of ETF intervention fund and pupils' academic performance was not significant because P>.05 with a negative value which showed inverse relationship. It was recommended that government should include public primary education in the school infrastructure intervention fundingframework to enhance improved academic performance in public primary schools.