Abstract:
his study was about the impact of budgetary control on financial performance of selected secondary schools
in Arusha City, Tanzania. The study used the quantitative approach under the descriptive correlational
research design. The city had a total of 29 private secondary schools out of which nine, which is 30% of the
total population were selected through simple random sampling. From the sampled schools, eight school
administrators (school heads, treasurer, deputy school heads, academic masters, disciplinary master, and
three heads of departments were purposely selected to constitute the sample. Therefore, a total of 72
respondents were given the questionnaire to fill but the response rate was 70 which is 97.2%. Data was
collected through a questionnaire which was piloted in the field for informed validity. Reliability test was run
through the SPSS and the test yielded the Cronbach’s Alpha of above 0.7 for each variable. Based on the
findings of the study, the study came up with the following conclusions. The budgetary process was effective
as departments submit budget plans for the following year, every stakeholder was included in the planning
of budget, departments participate in the budget planning and constraints that lead to the final budget were
explained to school stakeholders. Furthermore, there was a clear budgeting policy in the school and there is
a fair allocation of resources as planned. However, the financial performance of the schools was poor as the
schools did not afford to cover the operating cost, the schools did not gain profits in their projects and there
were inadequate financial resources to run the institutions. Budgetary process did not account for
effectiveness of financial performance but budgetary control did. The study recommends that the schools
under investigation should maintain the current budgetary processes. The existing budget control measures
need to be maintained for schools to perform well financially. There is a need to revamp the financial
performance mechanisms for the schools to afford handling the operating costs.
