Perspective of Administration on Senior Secondary School Students’ Academic Performance in Ogoja Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The Study Examined Perspective of Administration on Senior Secondary School Students’ Academic performance in Ogoja Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria. The Government of Nigeria has since achieved independence from Britain in 1960.  This demonstrated a lot of interest in the development of secondary education by leading the country to two major policies; the Nation Policy on Education (N.P.E) in 1977 (post-independence) and the revised implementation of Universal Basic Education (U.B.E) in 2000 to provide free education for children at primary and junior secondary school levels. Other efforts to improve academic performance in schools includes: private-public partnership, school based management committee (SBMC), NGOs amongst others. These major efforts are aim at improving students’ academic performance in their terminals or final examinations. The research discussed administration, the school as a social system, students’ academic performance, school discipline et cetera. Methodological approaches are mixed-method design which allowed the researcher to triangulate data from the literature, and questionnaires are closed ended questions that stems from three objectives and research questions used for the study. The total population of students is one-thousand, nine hundred and fifty (1,950) students. Whereas, thirty-six (36) students in a school were picked for the sample and questionnaire administered. Students that were drawn from the twenty secondary schools are seven hundred and twenty (720) forming the population of the research. Result of the hypotheses tested indicated that there is a negative correlational relationship between principals’ administrative skills and students’ academic performance.  Formula: r-1. The study retained null hypotheses at 0.05 level, since the calculated r-value is 0.93 less than the p-value at 0.997 and the alternate hypotheses is rejected. The research recommendations are: selection of school principals by the regulatory bodies should be based on ideals tenets of leadership qualities, and discipline in school should be re-emphasize by both the parents, teachers and school administrators to improve students’ academic performance.