IMPEDIMENTS TO PRINCIPALS’ EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS FOR EMPOWERMENT AND JOB CREATION IN EKITI STATE

Abstract

The study investigated the impediments to the school principals' effective management of Secondary schools for empowerment and job creation in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised all 189 secondary schools in Ekiti State as at (2022/2023 academic session). The study employed a proportionate stratified random sampling technique to select 128 school principals from a total population of 189 across the 16 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Ekiti State. The instrument used for data collection for the study was a self-structured questionnaire titled “Principals’ Impediments and Management of Secondary School Questionnaire, “(PIMSSQ)”. The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while the hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings of the study were that lack of skilled personnel and inadequate facilities were discovered as impediments to effective management of secondary schools for empowerment and job creation in Ekiti State. Based on the findings, it is recommended that both federal and state governments, along with non-governmental organizations, intensify efforts to address the issues of insufficient funding and inadequate facilities in schools. This is particularly important given that the program is capital-intensive and has the potential to significantly contribute to empowerment and job creation.