ABSTRACT: The study focused on an Investigation into the Impact of School-Community Relation on the Effective Management of Public Secondary Schools. Research questions and null hypotheses were posed and formulated respectively to guide the study. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study reviewed literatures that are related to the study. Survey design was adopted to collect relevant data used for the study. The population of the study was 4536 while the sample was 368 respondents. The instrument used for data collection was self-structured questionnaire titled, “School-Community Relation and Effective Management of Public Secondary Schools Questionnaire” (CREMPSSQ).
An Investigation Into The Impact Of School-Community Relation On The Effective Management Of Public Secondary Schools
Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study revealed that school-community relations impact significantly in effective management of public secondary schools.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Every nation of the world placed educational development at the top most level among other social service providers in the state. Abdulyaqin and Durosaro (2017) would say that the status of education as both a service and a business has made the educational sector retain a place of priority in the budgetary allocation of any national. The type of service provided by education is in different levels, thus in Nigeria, we have pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels. With the launch of UBE, and the policy to eradicate illiteracy and to ensure that all children of school age are in school, the government alone could not chatter for the provision of educational services in this country thus have allowed the participation of voluntary agencies and private partnership in education.
School as an open system and a social organization thrives on the effective interrelationship within it and with its relevant community. What happens in a school affects the community, and what happens in the community affects the schools (Nwankwo, Nwokafor, Ogunsanwo & Ighalo, 1985) as sighted in Bala (2013). This means that the community builds its schools and the schools build their communities (Sidhu, 2007). Therefore, school community interdependence is unbreakable. This means that school community relationship is very important in secondary schools because schools cannot exist in isolation but in cooperation with the community in which they find themselves (Ihebereme, 2008).
The success or failure of secondary schools depends to a large extent, on the level of relationship the schools maintain with their neighbouring communities. This makes it demanding on the school administrators to identify the key areas of school community relationship between their schools and the host communities. Miller (2011). The school in pursuit of quality requires a lot of human, materials, physical facilities and financial resources for building the capacity of the education system to be able to deliver high quality and relevant curriculum to learners of all ages. To ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote long life learning opportunities there must be recognition of measurable learning outcomes in schools especially, in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.
A community is a group of people that interact and support each other, and are bound by shared experiences or characteristics, a sense of belonging, and often by their physical proximity. A community inherently consists of a group of people. It cannot be established by a sole individual. For instance, geographical location (e.g., neighborhood) is often a common element to various definitions of community (Miller, 2011; Sampson, 2001; Vaughan, 2011). Physical proximity was the most frequently reported theme in the reviewed literature and the focus groups. Researchers often focus on proximity as a necessary attribute which bounds people in their communities (Parsons, 1960; Sampson, 2001).
Government has its hands in virtually every facet, feature and dimension of education at all levels, from the approval to the construction of schools, colleges and universities, from the establishment of curricula and the setting of standards and inspection to the appointment, discipline and removal of school authorities, and from the fixing of salaries and allowances to the determination of timetables for terms and semesters, etc. This anomaly is responsible in large measure for the collapse of educational institutions and the failure of the educational enterprise in Nigeria, hence the need for community participation in quality assurance education provision.
An Investigation Into The Impact Of School-Community Relation On The Effective Management Of Public Secondary Schools
1.2 Statement of the Problem
School-Community relations has the potential of developing education in relation to access, retention, quality education, transparency and accountability if well established. In this part of the world (Nigeria) relationship is left to individual schools and administration to come up with their own initiatives and models which work by experimentation. There is no unified approach by the government even when so much has been written about its benefits. It is, therefore, not clear how such community involvement or relationships should be established. Therefore, this study investigates into the impact of school-community relation on the effective management of public secondary schools.
The role of parents for a long time, has remained to be that of provision of finances for infrastructure developments, attending annual meetings and provision of security and healthcare to their children. In order to achieve the educational goals of the schools the community needs to be fully involved and an active participant in the implementation, monitoring and actualization of school programmes. The community ought to be treated as an integral part of the school and their roles seen more as complementary rather than supplementary. There is a need to build strong communication and successful working relations between schools and the many communities that they serve. Accounting issues, funding pressures, increasing competition and expanding expectations are just a few items in the growing list of communication pressures facing secondary schools today.