Abstract

More than two decades after the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme was launched, public primary schools in Abakaliki Education Zone of Ebonyi State still carry visible gaps in basic provision. The study evaluated the implementation of the programme by examining the extent to which infrastructural facilities and instructional materials were available in the zone's primary schools, using the Federal Ministry of Education's guidelines for the establishment of primary schools and the UBE guidelines (1999) as benchmarks. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study, which adopted a descriptive survey design. The population comprised 2,673 respondents (238 head teachers and 2,435 teachers) in 238 public primary schools, from which 360 respondents (120 head teachers and 240 teachers) were drawn through proportionate stratified random sampling. Data were collected with the Evaluation of Implementation of UBE Programme in Primary Schools Questionnaire (EIUBPSQ), validated by three experts, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.81 and 0.74 for the two clusters reported here. Of the 360 copies distributed, 342 (95.0%) were retrieved and analysed using mean, standard deviation and the independent samples t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Infrastructural facilities were available to a low extent (grand mean = 2.07), with libraries, potable water and toilets the weakest items. Instructional materials were also available to a low extent (grand mean = 2.25); only chalkboards and teachers' guides crossed the 2.50 benchmark. Head teachers and teachers did not differ significantly on infrastructure (t = 0.85, p = .394), yet they differed significantly on instructional materials (t = 3.16, p = .002). Implementation in the zone remains input-starved, and the deficit bites hardest at the classroom level