PRINCIPALS’ ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS STRATEGIES FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
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PRINCIPALS’
ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS STRATEGIES FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE IN
SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Abstract
This study
sought to examine principals’ administrative process strategies for the
achievement of quality assurance in secondary schools in Kogi State. The design
of the study was a descriptive survey. Five research questions and two null
hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study comprised 228
respondents. The sample of the study consisted of 228 principals. Questionnaire
was used as instrument for data collection. Mean and standard deviation were used
to answer the research questions, while t-test statistics was used to test the
null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study
indicate that the principals’ planning strategies for quality assurance in
secondary schools include preparation of school time table on time among
others. There is no significant difference between the mean ratings of male and
female principals on the principals’ planning strategies for the achievement of
quality assurance in secondary schools; the principals’ organizing strategies
for quality assurance in secondary schools comprise making proper arrangements
prior to any external examination among others. While organizing programmes
like debate and quiz competition during special assembly at least once in a
week among others is not the principals’ organizing strategies for the
achievement of quality assurance in secondary schools; there is no significant
difference between the mean ratings of male and female principals on the
principals’ organizing strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in
secondary schools; the principals’ staff personnel strategies for quality
assurance in secondary schools comprise taking regular attendance of staff
members among others while delegation of duties and responsibilities to staff
and encouraging staff professional growth by encouraging teachers to undergo
on- the- job training like seminars among others is not the principals’ staff
personnel strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in secondary schools;
the principals’ coordinating strategies for quality assurance in secondary
schools include ensuring that every teacher is working towards the attainment
of school goals among others; the principals’ budgeting strategies for quality
assurance in secondary schools include making sure that various departmental
needs are forwarded by heads of department or subject coordinator for inclusion
in the school budget among others. The study concluded among others that proper
use of the documented planning, organizing, coordinating, staff personnel, and
budgeting strategies by school principals could promote quality assurance in
secondary school administration. From the findings and implications of the
study, it was recommended among others that state government should appoint
capable and qualified persons as principals in order to implement the
documented administrative strategies for quality assurance in secondary school
administration.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background
of the Study
Education
could be seen as an instrument for achieving socio-economic and technological
growth and development of any nation. It is an instrument par-excellence and
the means of developing human intellect, technical skills, character and
effective citizenship for self-reliance and effective national development
(FRN, 2004). A simple way of appreciating education is that it is a tool or a
necessary weapon that is needed by every human being in order to effectively
navigate this complex world (Aguba, 2009). Education in essence is the most
effective instrument for academic progress, social mobilization, political
survival and effective national development of a country, it constitutes the
single largest enterprise in Nigeria (Akpa, 2002). The educational policy of
any nation is to achieve education for all (E.F.A.) (Moest, 2008). The priority
is to ensure equitable access and improvement in the quality and efficiency of
all level of education.
The concern
of the principal of secondary school is to direct the activities of teachers,
students and other staff in the school towards the school objectives. The roles
to be performed by the school principal can be categorized into two, namely:
supervision
of school programmes which include: curricula and extra curricula activities
(allocation of schedule of duty or subjects, school time table, school
organization, etc.)
interpersonal
relation which involves school discipline, evaluation of teachers performance,
community support and involvement, helping in solving staff and student
personal problems e.t.c.
The
principal of a school is a planner, director, controller, coordinator,
organizer, adviser and a problem-solver (Maduabuchi, 2002). He identifies and
set goals and objectives of the school, which of course, must be in line with
the national objectives, analyses tasks and share responsibilities to the staff
according to specialization and expertise (Ugochi, 2007). The status of
secondary school principal is not gender discriminating. Therefore, a principal
can either be a male or female. A good principal should champion the course of
quality assurance in his or her school to ensure a better school
administration.
The ultimate
goal of education administration at all levels is to develop an all inclusive
and quality education that is accessible and relevant for self reliance. This
is guided by the understanding that good education contributes significantly to
economic growth, improvement of employment prospects and income generating
opportunities for sustainable development. For qualitative education to be
achieved in a nation, the teacher (human resources) financial and instructional
facilities (material resources) must be co-operatively organized. In other
words, the teacher in secondary school must be well trained and supervised
(assisted), the learners continuously evaluated and funds and facilities
adequately provided.
There is a
number of administrative processes that exist to assist the administrator in
carrying out his day-to-day activities. An administrator who ignores these
processes is likely to encounter problems in the task of school administration.
Hence, administration is seen as a collection of processes dealing with the
various ways in which human and material resources are utilized to achieve set
goals in an organization. These processes include such elements as planning,
decision making, organizing, coordinating, motivating, directing, evaluating,
staffing, and budgeting. Enyi in Ogbonnaya (2013) stressed that administrative
process can therefore be regarded as the sum total of the various processes of
planning, organizing, stimulating, coordinating, staffing, budgeting,
communication and evaluating, which aid administrators in the utilization of
resources in the achievement of organizational goals.
Within the
school system, virtually all the various aspect of the school programmes and
activities should be planned. According to Oboegbulem (2011) planning is the
process of deciding in advance, the methods and procedures which an individual,
group or organization intends to follow in order to accomplish its outlined
objectives. The important thing in planning is to decide, in advance, the
objectives to be achieved and how to utilize the available resources in
achieving these objectives. In other words, to plan is to decide in advance
what is to be done and how to do it. The scarcity of resources makes the need
more necessary, since the little available resources have to be evenly spread
to reach every competing segment.
No
administrator can function alone without the assistance of others. Thus, in
other to achieve the set educational objectives, the administrator must have a
frame work or structure for his school on which posts are created and assigned
to people. Enyi (1999) sees organizing in schools as an administrative process
of having a structure and assigning people to the posts for the purpose of
performing specific duties. It is sometimes seen as a process on which an
administrator identifies and groups the work to be done in smaller units, and
assigns people to the various units with relevant materials and authority.
Organizing in schools enables the principal to assign duties to academic and
non academic staff according to competence and it tends to minimize conflict in
schools, since each person knows what to do. Organizing helps the principal to
coordinate the various organizational activities, since he is aware of the
various assignments given to individuals.
Principals,
who are charged with the responsibility of utilizing human and material
resources in schools, need to have the ability to coordinate these resources in
order to achieve the desired results. Nwankwo (1982), explained coordination as
a process whereby an orderly pattern of group effort is developed to ensure
unity of action in the pursuit of common goals. Thus, a secondary school with
various departments, units and individuals with different functions need to be
properly coordinated to ensure that the set school objectives are achieved.
Coordination may therefore be defined as the process of directing and
harmonizing resources and group activities for achieving set educational goals
without friction.
In the
school situation, staff personnel administration forms an important
responsibility of the school administration in achieving the goals of the
school in particular and education in general. Staffs in the secondary schools
include not only the teachers, but also non teaching staff, clerk, watchmen,
labourers, cooks, and laboratory attendants. Teaching and non-teaching staff
are important tools in the hands of the secondary school principals in
achieving educational objectives.
The
functional scope of staff personnel administration as stated in Enyi 1999,
includes responsibilities of the administrator in;
Determining
the personnel needs of the school, (tutorial and non-tutorial);
Satisfying
personnel needs;
Maintaining
and improving services of the staff.
In
educational institution, the budget is prepared by the bursary department or
finance office as the case may be. Ogbonnaya (2005) had defined budget as the
financial statement of the proposed expenditure and expected revenue of the
government, public corporations, or educational institution for a particular
period of time. The budget usually covers a period of one year. It shows
clearly the expected income and proposed expenditure of government or an
educational institution for the coming year. The principal must be sure of what
revenue is to be anticipated and from what sources it is to be derived before
preparing his budget for the school. Budget controls the financial behavior of
principals in a school system and prevent waste or reckless spending of fund
provided for various educational services.
The
administrative dealings of various secondary schools in Kogi state seems to
have been hindered by numerous problems. These problems may include: poor
supervision, conflict among teachers, inadequate funding, inadequate
facilities, lack of principal-teacher relationship, and poor leadership styles
of the principal among others. Some school principals in Kogi State seem to
lack vision, there appears to be inadequate job analysis and work plan with
poor instructional supervision which culminated into poor curriculum delivery
in schools and consequently poor academic performance by the students. As far
as the position of a principal is concerned, the issue of “gender” is very
crucial because a principal could either be a male (man) or female (female).
Gender
refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and
attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. To put
it another way: "Male" and "female" are sex categories,
while "masculine" and "feminine" are gender categories
(Ivan, 2008). Gender plays a very important role when it comes to the position
of a principal. In any secondary school, a principal can either be male or
female i.e man or woman. Some critics are of the view that women (females) have
a better charisma as far as the job of principalship is concerned. Another set
of critics refuted their idea and came up with an assertion that men (male)
have principalship proficiency in them naturally and therefore should be
considered a better gender for this profession than women. Other critics
totally disagree with their conjecture, but opined that everyone is capable of
becoming a principal; both men and women (male and female) provided they are
qualified and have acquired a sound leadership and administrative experience.
For the administrative processes to be effective in achieving quality assurance
there is need to adopt some administrative process strategies (Ivan, 2008).
Administrative
process strategy is a concerned with shaping an organization in the right part
towards the achievement of its goal. Some of the administrative process
strategies of the principals include planning strategy, organizing strategy,
staff personnel strategy, coordinating strategy and budgeting strategy. These
administrative strategies are pertinent in the achievement of quality assurance
in secondary schools.
Quality
assurance is a process of ensuring effective resource input, control, refining
the processes and raising the standard of output in order to meet the set
goals. Ayeni, (2012) opined that quality assurance in education is the
efficient management, monitoring, evaluation and reviews of the resource inputs
and transformation process (teaching and learning) to produce a quality output
(students) that meets set standards and expectations of the society. Quality
assurance in education aims at preventing quality problems and ensures that the
products of the system conform to the expected standards. Thus, the quality of
education is the degree of excellence of the output (students) which can be
achieved through principals’ effective administrative strategy. Mckeown (2011)
argues that “quality assurance strategy is about shaping the future “and is the
human attempt to get to “desirable ends with available means”.
Quality
assurance is an organization guarantee that the product or service it offers
meets the accepted quality standards (Lopez, 2003). It is achieved by
identifying what "quality" means in context; specifying methods by
which its presence can be ensured; and specifying ways in which it can be
measured to ensure conformity. Quality assurance is a component of quality
management and it is focused on providing confidence so that quality
requirements will be fulfilled (Flanna, 2008). It can be said to be Processes
and procedures for ensuring that qualifications, assessment and programme
delivery meet certain standards. Quality assurance relates to the achievement
of educational program standards established by institutions, professional
organizations, government, and/or standard-setting bodies established by
government. Walklin (2002) defined quality assurance as the avoidance of
non-performance by pre-empting failure through proper planning, execution,
monitoring and evaluation. It is a way of managing an organization so that every
job, every process, is implemented right at first time and always.
Quality
assurance in the school system implies the ability of the educational
institutions to meet the expectations of the users of manpower in relation to
the quality of skills required by their outputs. It can be said to be the
abilities of the schools to meet certain criteria relating to academic matters,
staff – student ratios, staff development, physical facilities, funding, and
adequate library facilities (Ajayi and Adegbesan, 2007). Quality assurance in
the school system refers to all the activities that are conducted in order to
achieve or maintain a certain acceptable quality level. It is an avoidance of
defects in the education process. Cole (1996) opined that quality assurance in
any educational institution indicates that students’ learning is well supported
with adequate resources and that those actively involved both in school
administration and teaching have clear job descriptions and know their job
responsibilities. It involves a series of operational techniques and activities
which include all the actions taken in order for the quality requirement to be
met.
Quality
assurance in education is a totality of the combination of some indispensable
variables such as quality teachers, quality instructional materials and quality
infrastructures (classrooms, seats, tables, chalkboards, etc.). Others include:
favourable teacher/pupil ratio, favourable pupils/classroom ratio, and quality
instructional supervision. Quality assurance means putting in place appropriate
structures, legislations, supervision of personnel and materials in order to
ensure that set minimum standards are attained, sustained and seen to have
meaningful impact on the society. There seems to be a sharp decline in the
quality of education system in most of the public schools in Kogi State.
Indicators of such declining quality and wastage in the education system may
include: high drop-out and failure rates, rampant examination malpractices,
poor reading and writing skills among students at all levels. There is evidence
of client reaction as many parents take their children to private schools
within and outside the state.
Adedoja
(2010) explained that quality assurance have increasingly and significantly
become the strongest parameters for determining the relevance and a functionality of education, especially in
developing countries where reform regimes in the sector have become imperative
for meeting the Education For All and Millennium Development Goals targets. But,
inspite of the importance of quality in education, it continues to pose serious
challenge to education sector, which is strategic for national and regional
development. Quality assurance in education, according to Adedoja (2010),
refers to the modalities for evolving, monitoring and re-appraising indices,
benchmarks and good practices within an education system. Ukeje (2003) explain
that quality assurance in a school setting is made possible through proper
planning by the management which involves all the staff in the functions of
planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation using set standards and
objectives. There is need to uphold quality assurance in secondary schools to
ensure a successful school administration.
Secondary
education is crucial in both personal and national development. Secondary
school level is the bridge between the primary and tertiary levels. Secondary
education is the education children receive after primary education and before
the tertiary stage within the range of 12 to 18 years (FRN, 2004). The broad
goal of secondary education is to prepare the individual for useful living in
the society and for higher education (FRN, 2004). Specifically, the secondary
school system is geared towards catering for the differences in talents, opportunities
and future roles, to provide technical knowledge and vocational skills
necessary for agricultural, industrial, commercial and economic development
(FRN, 2004). Secondary school should be able to provide quality teaching and
learning.
The importance
of secondary education cannot be over emphasized since it has both consumer and
producer status. This is because it consumes the product of primary schools and
produce candidates for tertiary education in the nation. Realizing the need to
improve the reducing secondary education quality which had been partly
attributed to ineffective principals’ administrative process strategies which
ought to be repositioned through improvement of administrative process
strategies of principals.
Given this
background, the aim of the present study is to examine and identify principals’
administrative strategy for the achievement of quality assurance in secondary
schools in Kogi state.
Statement of
the Problem
Ideally,
secondary school administration is expected to promote quality assurance in
Education of the citizens for national development. It is the expectation of
the government, parents and even students that quality education is received by
students in Nigeria secondary schools through the adoption of appropriate
administrative process/ strategies by the principals.
However,
observations have shown that there seems to be poor principals’ administrative
process/strategies which have led to poor quality assurance in secondary
schools in Kogi State. This can be seen in the areas of inadequate funding,
inadequate facilities, poor instructional supervision, conflict among teachers,
poor vision of the principals, poor principal teacher relationship and poor
administrative style of the principals among others. These situations seem to
have led to poor academic achievement among the secondary school students, high
drop-out rate, and high rate of examination malpractice, poor reading and
writing cultures among others.
The above
situation should not be allowed to continue, hence the problem of this study
put in question form is, ‘what are the principals administrative
process/strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in secondary
schools in Kogi State’?
Purpose of
the Study
The main
purpose of this study is to examine principals’ administrative process
strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in secondary schools in
Kogi State.
Specifically,
the study seeks to:
Determine
principals’ planning strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in
secondary schools in Kogi State.
Ascertain
principals’ organizing strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in
secondary schools in Kogi State.
Find out
principals’ staff personnel strategies for the achievement of quality assurance
in secondary schools in Kogi State.
Identify
principals’ coordinating strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in
secondary schools in Kogi State.
Determine
principals’ budgeting strategies for the achievement of quality assurance in
secondary schools in Kogi State.
Significance
of the study
This study
has both theoretical and practical significance. The theoretical foundation of
this study is hinged on the Schwartz theory of planning. The Schwartz theory
states that every problems of mankind is surmountable provided a suitable
planning approach is adopted and implemented correctly. The Schwartz asserts
that in any condition whatsoever there must be a light at the end of the
tunnel. The theory also states that before any problem is discovered in the
world, the solution has already been in existence, it is a matter of planning.
Schwartz proclaimed that good planning can achieve one or more goals under
conditions of uncertainty. The concepts of this theory can be a guide and also
boost the confidence of secondary school principals in their bid to map out
some administrative process strategies to achieve quality assurance in their
various schools.
The findings
of this study will be practically significant to school principals, teachers,
parents, students, Kogi state government, and future researchers.
The findings
of this study will acquaint school principals on the poor quality educational
system in Kogi state and also offer them credible strategies to restrain such
trend and improve the quality of learning in the state. The findings of this
study will unearth some administrative problems ravaging secondary school
administration in Kogi state and suggest some possible strategies which can be
adopted by school principals to abolish such problems.
Teachers
will benefit immensely from the findings of this study. This study will unveil
some of the teachers’ problems which lead to poor teaching and learning in
various secondary schools in Kogi state. As the school principals adopt and
implement some strategies suggested in this study in their bid to solve these
problems, teachers will be favored. They will be motivated in other to exhibit
high morale in their job as their salaries are likely to be increased.
Parents will
benefit from the findings of this study. When adequate care is given to
teachers, they will be happy to teach their students with enthusiasm.
Consequently, students will receive quality education and also excel
academically to the glory of their parents. Their parents will not only be glad
and proud of their children, but they will also be elated that the money they
are investing in their children’s’ education is not in vain. The findings of
this study will benefit students colossally. It will help them experience
quality sound teaching from motivated and high morale teachers, which will
enable them attain academic excellence.
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