SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Educational Management And Policy

CONTRIBUTORS:

Uyanwa, C. U.
Unachukwu, G. O.

ABSTRACT:

The main purpose of the study was to assess school based management committees’ (SBMC) involvement in the administration of public secondary schools in Anambra State. Five research questions guided the study and five hypotheses were tested. The design of the study was descriptive survey research design. The area of the study was Anambra State, Nigeria. The population comprised 3,341 members (internal and external) of School-Based Management Committees in the 257 state government owned secondary schools in the six education zones of the State. The sample of this study was 1008 respondents made up of 288 internal members and 720 external members of SBMCs in the state government owned public secondary schools in the State. A researcher-developed questionnaire containing 51 items in five clusters was used to collect data for the study. The instrument was validated by three experts who are all lecturers in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha The reliability test yielded reliability coefficients of 0.84, 0.89, 0.85, 0.78 and 0.81 for the five clusters respectively while the overall reliability co-efficient value for the instrument was 0.83. Arithmetic mean was used to analyze data in relation to the research questions while t-test was used in testing the null hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that SBMCs were involved in the development plan and financial management of public secondary schools in Anambra State to a moderate extent. It was also revealed that SBMCs involvement in ensuring high enrolment and attendance rate, procurement and management of school facilities and ensuring the provision of adequate security in schools was to a low exent. Internal and external members of SBMCs did not significantly differ in their opinion on their involvement in the school development plan in public secondary schools. However, they differed significantly on the extent of their involvement in the financial management, high enrolment and attendance rate, procurement and management of school facilities and ensuring the provision of adequate security in the secondary schools. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that the Government should through the Post Primary Schools Service Commission (PPSSC) organize seminars for SBMC members to further educate them on the need for their involvement in the development plans of their schools. It was also recommended that the Post Primary Schools Service Commission should monitor principals’ activities on their involvement of members of SBMCs in the management of their school financial resources. Conclusions and implications of the study were drawn and sugestions for further studies made.