A Comparative Study of the Administrative Effectiveness of Principals of Public and Private Secondary School in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

This is a study on the comparative effectiveness between the administration of principals of public and private secondary schools in Cross River State. One null hypothesis was used to compare general administration, supervision, decision-making and motivational techniques between principals of the two groups of schools. A 20 item researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 teachers that formed the respondents. Independent t-test was used to analyze the data collected. The result from the data analyzed showed that the four variables of effectiveness in general administration, supervision, decision-making and motivational techniques had calculated scores of 0.711, 0.749, 0.056 and 0.598 respectively as against the calculated table value of 1.96. Thus the null hypothesis which stated that there was no significant differences in administrative effectiveness between public and private secondary schools in Cross River State was upheld. Hence the popular notion held by the public that private schools were administratively more effective becomes a myth except proved otherwise in future studies using other parameters not covered by this study. It was recommended that government should continue to organize conferences, workshops and retraining programmes for heads of public and private secondary schools in the state to update their knowledge and skills in administration.