Participatory Management for Enhancing Students' Academic Performance in Public Secondary Schools in Rivers State.

Ebunu, Akpofure Anna

doi:10.14738/assrj.75.8197

Abstract

This study investigated participatory management for enhancing students' performance in public secondary schools in Rivers State. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of the study was all the 276 principals and 8,452 teachers in public senior secondary schools as well as 4,455 students’ parents. The sample of the study was 730 respondents, comprising 90 principals, 360 teachers and 280 parents who were selected through the combination of stratified sampling, simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques. Instrument of data collection was 10 items questionnaire titled, “Teachers and Parents Participation in Secondary School Management Questionnaire (TPPSSMQ). The instrument was a validated four-point likert styled, Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD). It has a reliability index of 0.82, using Cronbach Alpha Statistical test. The research questions were analysed using mean and standard deviation whereas the hypotheses were tested using z-test statistics at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of the study revealed that the involvement of teachers in school decision-making would give teachers broader opportunity to make inputs in policy issues that concern effective instructional delivery. The study further showed that the involvement of parents in school decision-making would give them ample platform to offer their advices on how to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Based on the findings, the study recommended that school managers should give teachers meaningful opportunities to make inputs, that such opportunities will empower them to take decisions on issues affecting their work performance and productivity for enhanced students' achievement. Furthermore, school authorities should accord parents’ opportunities to offer their advices on how to enhance resource accountability to foster efficient school management and quality teaching and learning in the school.

Highlights

The increasing social changes driven by Information Communication Technology (ITC) and the resulting competitiveness in socio-political and economic environments have no doubt heightened the challenges facing school managers
It is true that before now, educationist and scholars use to give greater attention to teacher qualities and students' achievement in estimating quality school, recent studies have shown that teacher's job performance and students' learning outcomes are just variables that depend on many other factors, among which include; individual school management structure and style, availability of educational resources and the quality of programmes provided to students under conducive environment as well as the quality of support an individual school receives from stakeholders (Lawal & Yusuf, 2014)
Given the points highlighted above, this study is emboldened to explore the prospect of democratising and decentralizing decisionmaking process in public schools given that the current centralized management system seems to be defective given that it alienates stakeholders from making inputs on issues that concern their schools. It was against this background that this study examined how involvement of teachers and parents in school management to enhance students' achievement in secondary schools in Rivers

Summary

Introduction

The increasing social changes driven by Information Communication Technology (ITC) and the resulting competitiveness in socio-political and economic environments have no doubt heightened the challenges facing school managers. Recent empirical studies had lent credence to the avowed benefits of involving stakeholders in organizational governance (Nwankwo, 2014:45), as the traditional totalitarian management approaches that rarely acknowledges workers' ability to make useful contribution to work structuring was no longer producing intended results (Duze, 2011:201) This is probably the reason why many organizations are moving away from authoritarian management style to participatory approach that embraces decentralization of authority, job enrichment and empowerment that afford decision-making privileges to institutional members, and reassures stakeholders' faith in the school's ability to improve academic performance of students. Under this arrangement is conveyed the idea that every stakeholder matter, and their contributions valued by the school

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Conclusion