INFLUENCE OF RECORDS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON ADMINISTRATIVE EFFECTIVENESS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Administrative effectiveness in secondary schools is germane to making education relevant to the growth of the society.The operational processes and functions in school administration depend on the good management of the documented activities of the school programs, infrastructures, staff and students found in school records for successful executions. Previous studies found that school records were basically created in paper formats which ran into many volumes with the problems of inadequate storage and in-effective preservation methods among others, although the studies did not use the records life cycle in the appraisal of the records management practices. These reported poor records management practices made the retrieval of school records difficult and sometimes impossible resulting in in-effective school administration. This paper examines the influence of records management practices on administrative effectiveness in public secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for this study and the instrument for data collection was a questionnaire administered on a sample size of360 administrative team members in public senior secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. Data analysis was done using frequency counts and simple percentages to answer the research questions while regression analysis technique was employed to test he hypotheses. Research findings revealed that the schools have all the statutory and non- statutory records for proper and adequate administrative duties, the records management policy manual was available and the records management practices were based on the records life cycle in the public senior secondary schools in Lagos State. Additionally, the study found that the records creation stage was well managed while the maintenance and use stage were fairly managed and the disposition stage was poorly managed. Based on the findings, the study recommends the provision of equipment that would ensure that school records are properly stored, preserved and disposed to achieve best practices in records management for effective school administration.