PRINCIPALS’ UTILIZATION OF SUPERVISORY SKILLS FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to investigate principals’ utilization of supervisory skills for quality assurance in public secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. Eight research questions were posed and answered while eight hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Eight research questions and eight null hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study was 63,527 which comprised 1,244 principals and 58,343 teachers in public secondary schools in South-Eastern State. The sample for the study was 1,980 made of teachers and 565 principals. A multi stage sampling technique was adopted to draw the sample for this study. The instrument for data collection was a researcher developed questionnaire titled “Principals’ Utilization of Supervisory Skills for Teachers Questionnaire (PUSSTQ). The questionnaire focused on specific areas of principals’ supervisory skills namely communication, problem solving, leadership, development, resourcefulness and empathy skills. The study also investigated the factors impeding principals’ use of supervisory skills and ways of improving principals’ supervisory skills for quality assurance in public secondary schools in South East, Nigeria. The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts. The experts were requested to check the relevance, adequacy, language, comprehensiveness and appropriateness of the items bearing in mind the purpose of the study. To determine the reliability of the instrument, a trial-test was conducted with 15 teachers and 5 principals in public secondary schools in Kogi State which is outside the area of the study. Cronbach Alpha Method was used to determine the internal consistency of the clusters of the instrument and they yielded 0.89, 0.74, 0.70, 0.83, 0.90, 0.96, 0.91 and 0.82 for the eight clusters respectively. The data for the study were collected with the help of four research assistants. On-rthe spot method was used to administer the questionnaire to the respondents. Out of the 1,980 copies of the questionnaire administered, 1,923 copies were retrieved representing 97% return rate. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation in answering the research questions while t-test statistics was used for testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. From the data collected and analysed, the study found that principals in public secondary schools in south east, Nigeria to a little extent utilize communication, problem solving, leadership, development, resourcefulness and empathy skills in supervising teachers for quality assurance in the schools. The study also identified factors impeding principals’ use of supervisory skills and ways of improving principals’ supervisory skills for quality assurance in public schools in south east, Nigeria. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among others that: the principals be given opportunities for self development through study leave with pay in order to acquire higher degree for better performance and that workshops, seminars, and conferences be organized by relevant agencies of education through the states ministries of education in which the principals as supervisors constitute the participants and major target of such programmes.