ADMINISTRATIVE COMPETENCIES REQUIRED BY SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS IN SOUTH EAST OF NIGERIA

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Abstract

This study investigated the administrative competencies required by secondary school principals in South-East of Nigeria, focusing on five (5) identified administrative areas of finance, personnel, instructional leadership, maintenance of physical facilities and Information Communication and Technology (ICT). Five research questions and five related hypotheses were formulated for the study. A five-part questionnaire, consisting of 45 items was constructed by the researcher, and validated by experts, to gather data from 500 principals in 500 secondary schools in the zone, using descriptive survey design. The scores from the respondents were analyzed, using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and the t-test statistic to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of probability. Major findings indicated that the principals in the Zone required a variety of administrative competencies relating to: ability to maintain effective instructional leadership by allowing staff to participate in selecting learning experiences; skills in having good personnel management by involving staff in decision-making and communicating freely with them; ability to manage school plant through effective utilization and maintenance of physical facilities and equipment; knowledge of ICT and its applications; By interpreting the findings in light of their implications, the researcher recommended among other things, that principals should use the identified administrative competencies in various areas of school administration, and that the various Post-Primary Schools Management Boards, Ministries of Education and ANCOPSS should use the identified competencies as a basis for organizing workshops, conferences, seminars and in-service programmes for their principals.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

          In Nigeria, principals are the heads of secondary schools, charged with the responsibility of running the day-to-day affairs of the schools.  Accordingly, they are responsible for all that happens in the schools.  Various writers have expressed their opinions on whom the principal is, via-a-vis his various roles and competencies.

Ogbonnaya (2004), Alpha (2005) and Odibo (2001) in their different opinions described the principal as the accounting officer of the school, the chief executive and instructional leader. As an accounting officer, the principal oversees the day-to day management of the school. Stressing further, Ogbonnaya (2004) stated that the most important function of the secondary school principal is his instructional leadership role in the school. According to the author, this role is exercised as the principal plans, organizes and promotes instructions. He however further noted that the secondary school principal has another function of ensuring that fund is procured and judiciously used on various school programmes.

          Mgbodile (2004) added that principals are responsible for implementing educational programmes in schools, ensuring that conducive atmosphere is created for learning. According to the writer, the principals   are the hub on which the success of secondary education revolves, because they help to translate policies on education into action.

          In view of the above, it can be deduced that the principal’s key function is to promote education through effective administration of teaching and learning programmes. It is therefore expected that a principal must be competent enough in his administrative duties. Eboka (2008) and Baudinette (2008) noted that successful administration of secondary schools require competent principals with appropriate administrative competencies. The question at this juncture is: What are these administrative competencies?  

According to Drea and O’Brien (2002), administrative competencies of principals refer to the knowledge, skills and abilities which the principals require to do their jobs effectively. They further stressed that administrative competencies also involve those range of personal characteristics (for example, personal values, motives and ideas) which administrators bring to bear upon their jobs. It is their opinion that these personal characteristics complement the professional competencies the principal requires for effective school administration. In a related view Getha-Taylor (2008), refers to administrative competencies as those abilities which school administrators require in order to perform their jobs in a professional  manner. The emphasis is on the ability of administrators to achieve practical results. Given the above, and for the purposes of this study, administrative competencies refer to those personal and professional abilities a principal requires in planning and implementing educational programmes in schools.

          Findley and Findley (1992), made an early attempt to identify some administrative competencies.  Accordingly, the authors identified the critical importance of instructional leadership competence in school administration, emphasizing that with this competence, the principal is able to influence the quality of individual teacher’s instruction level of students’ learning achievement and degree of efficiency in the school.  Agu (2003) in a related attempt, limited administrative competencies to communication, human development and technical competencies, while Mgbodile (2004), restricted them to: staff-personnel administration, pupil-personnel administration, school plant and financial administration competencies.  Arikewuyo (2007), on the other hand, reported the dearth of empirical studies on principals’ administrative competencies, but noted that some competencies, as highlighted above, have been identified to be relevant to the effective administration of schools by principals.

 However, for the purposes of this study, attention was focused on the following five administrative competencies–instructional leadership competency, personnel management competency, financial management competency   physical facilities and equipment management competency and information communication and technology competency. The choice was informed by literature evidence which revealed that principals have problems with these administrative competencies, especially in the study area.

          Research studies have identified instructional leadership as an important factor in considering administrative competencies. Instructional leadership competencies, according to Flath (2002), refer to those actions that a principal takes or delegates to others to promote growth in students’ learning. In practice this means the principal’s ability to encourage educational achievement by making instruction the top priority in school programmes. Both Flath (2002) and Mgbodile (2004) agree that if a school is to be an effective one, in terms of students’ learning achievement, then it will be because of the instructional leadership competence of the principal.  Anderson and Pigford (2007) identified some major instructional leadership competencies to include: ability to identify and translate instructional goals to action, create conducive learning environment, evaluate what teachers and students are doing and intervene when necessary. Stronge (1998), on the other hand, emphasized supervision as a major competency of instructional leadership. To this study, instructional leadership competency was accepted as the principal’s ability to promote instruction and students’ achievement through the above –identified skills.

          Ironically, Stronge (1998) noted that although the role of the principal as an instructional leader is widely recognized, it is hardly practiced. According to the author the consensus in the literature is that principals spend more of their time on managerial issues because of ignorance of the competencies required for instructional leadership. This probably motivated the work of Ezike (2005) which also revealed that principals in Nsukka Education Zone of Enugu State lack intellectual abilities for carrying out their instructional leadership roles. Arua (2004) made a similar revelation with respect to principals in Ebonyi State. Okeke (2004) in his appraisal of administrative competencies of secondary school principals in Anambra and Enugu had equally concluded that the principals lack these instructional management competencies. This lack of instructional leadership competencies has led to some unfortunate crises in the educational system.

          Today, there is a public outcry on the poor performance of candidates in examinations. Okereke and Ugwu (2011) noted that the effect of inadequate instructional leadership is manifested in the rising poor performance in examinations (JAMB, WASSE, NECO, Post-UME etc), evident from the reports of examination bodies, parents, teachers and other education stakeholders. The 2011 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), for example, recorded the most terrible result since the inception of matriculation examinations in Nigeria. Out of the 1,493,604 candidates who sat for the examination, 842,651 or 56.4% percent, scored below 200 (JAMB, 2011). Adeniran (2011) partly blamed this poor performance on principals who pay lip service to the quality of instruction in schools. A similar observation was made with respect to the May/ June 2010 West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), where only 31% of the 1,540,250 candidates who sat for the  examination, obtained five credits and above, including English language and Mathematics (Uwadiae,2011). Although this represented an improvement over the 2010 performance of 23%, Uwadiae noted that it still shows that all is not well with instructional leadership in our secondary schools.

          Although the above cases are not peculiar to South-East states, the candidates from this zone, who often constitute the bulk of JAMB and WASSCE           candidates, cannot be exempted from this low performance situation. And since the principals are the chief accounting officers, they too cannot claim immunity over such poor academic performance. It was therefore apparent that principals require adequate instructional leadership competencies in order to cope with the level of academic decay in schools. This was where this study sought to make a contribution.

          Another identified administrative competency for study related to personnel administration which Nnabuo (1996), sees as the life-wire of an educational institution. Thomson (2007) defined personnel administration as the management of human resources in relation to attracting staff, assigning duties to them and maintaining good labour relations with them. In what appears to be an overall view of personnel administration, Oboegbulem (2004) summarized it to embrace determining and satisfying personnel needs as well as improving staff services.