IMPACT OF EFFECTIVE ADMINISTRATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL ON STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Education remains the biggest instrument for academic progress, social mobilization, political survival and effective national development of any country, it constitutes the largest enterprise/industry in Nigeria that is why, the government continues to ensure that funds, school facilities, instructional materials, teaching personnel and a beneficial learning environment are made available for the sector in Nasarawa State. The state Government has also continuously encouraged secondary education by adopting a social demand approach towards planning the education sector by subsidizing the SSCE fee in the state since 2012 in line with Archibong’s (2013) position that quality education does not just occur miraculously but can be achieved through continuous improvement efforts by the stakeholders in the education enterprise. Ehindero, Aladejana and Jegede (2009:12) define education as a process of critical, analytical and continuous re-assessment, readjustment and rediscovery of self, society and culture in the total contexts of life and living”. Education should enable those who consume it learn marketable skills to earn a job, learn to think, have an informed decision making which is cognizance of moral ethics as the component of life. It also entails personal development, and not just knowledge orientation or vocational. Relatedly, education is a process of providing knowledge, skills, competence or desirable qualities of behavior or character being so provided especially in a formal course of study, institution or training (Akpa, 2002). Education goes on all through one’s life, deepening and broadening one’s vision with expectant benefits to him as a person and the entire society. The individual’s advancement in education is without doubt improved knowledge, skills and capacities on which the roots of development are anchored. The development of society is therefore couched on the level of its educational attainment. Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted by Akpa (2002:25) as saying “The prosperity of a country depends not on the abundance of its revenues nor in the strength of its fortification. It consists in the number of its cultivated citizens in its men and women enlightenment and character”. The natural resources are mobilized, exploited to create a market by the humans. Thus economic development of any society begins with the mind of men and not with goods through education, organization and discipline (Udoh and Akpa 2001). Without education, all other resources remain latent untapped potentials; thus it is an indisputable tool for national development.
