Mfaiga Angenyi
Department of Geography, College of Education Katsina-Ala
Abstract
The study investigated the influence of the proliferation of schools on the management of private secondary schools in North-West Senatorial District of Benue State. Four research questions and hypotheses guided the study. Related literature was reviewed in the areas of theoretical/conceptual and empirical studies. The descriptive survey design was adopted targeting a population of 3672 teachers spread across 143 private secondary schools in the study area. Out of this number, 450 were sampled from a population of 3672 representing 12.25% of the respondents while 20 schools out of 143 representing 13.98% were also sampled. A – 20 item structured questionnaire titled PSQ was constructed by the researcher and used for data collection and the reliability co-efficient yielded 0.88. Mean scores and standard deviations were used for answering research questions while chi-square test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that the proliferation of schools has a significant influence on supervision, planning, staffing and examination conduct in private secondary schools in the zone. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended among others that proper supervision should be conducted in all the schools in the state to ensure uniformity of standards, and that Ministry of Education should organize conferences to intimate school administrators of ways to organize and run their schools as well as strengthening examination rules and indulge in appropriate staffing practices.