Strategic Management Practices Adopted by Principals for Effective Administration of Secondary Schools in Anambra State

Abstract

The study investigated the strategic management practices adopted by principals for effective administration of secondary schools in Anambra State. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The research design adopted for the study was descriptive survey. The study population comprised all the 258 principals in the 258 public secondary schools in Anambra State. No sampling was done due to the relatively small size of the population of the study. A researcher developed instrument titled ‘‘Principals’ Strategic Management Practices for Effective School Administration Questionnaire (PSMPESAQ)’’ was used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts and Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. The co-efficient for clusters I and II of PSMPESAQ were 0.88 and 0.77 respectively and the overall coefficient was 0.83. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that principals in urban and rural areas apply strategic planning practices for effective administration of secondary schools in Anambra State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that school principals should as a matter of priority explore possible ways of enhancing their strategic planning practices through capacity building workshops. Conclusions were drawn and suggestions for further studies were made.