This study focused on data management practices of head teachers in Kosofe education zone of Lagos state. The study tries to investigate how head teachers in Kosofe zone carries out data management. The Population for this study was 36,278 which comprises of 277 head teachers and 3,6001 assist, where the sample size used were 277 head teachers and 277 assistant head teachers making the sample size of 554. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.96 using Cronbach Alpha while three experts - two in Educational Administration and Planning and one from Measurement and evaluation carried out the face and content validation of the instrument. Four research questions and four null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. Mean and standard deviation were employed to answer the research questions. A twenty four item questionnaire on data management practices of head teachers in Kosofe education zone of Lagos state was used to get the mean scores, the following results were obtained.

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.