Evaluation of the Relationship Between Principals’ Administrative Negligence and Students’ Academic Achievement in Public Secondary Schools in Bayelsa and Delta States, Nigeria

This study use ex-post facto designed to examined the compatibility between principals’ administrative negligence and students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in Bayelsa and Delta States. Four research questions were raised and two hypotheses were formulated and tested. The population of the study comprised 16, 538 made up of 3744 teachers in public secondary schools and 414 staff of post primary education boards in Bayelsa and States respectively. A sample of 1, 653 comprised of 374 teachers and 41 members of staff of Post Primary Education Board in Bayelsa and 1189 teachers with 49 staff of Post Primary Education Board in Delta States i.e. a stratified random sampling was used to select 10% of the population of teachers and members of staff of Post Primary Education Board in both states respectively. The instruments were validated by experts in the field of study and reliability was determined by Pearson’s product moment correlation statistics and a coefficient of 0.66 was obtained for Principals’ Administrative Negligence Questionnaire (PANQ). The co-efficient was further stepped up using Spearman Brown’s formula and a co-efficient of 0.80 was obtained for PANQ. The statistical tool used to analyse the data were mean, standard deviation, research question 1, 2 and 3 including bar chart for research question 2, research question 4 correlation and coefficient of determination statistics was use while the Pearson’s product moment correlation statistics was used for the test of the 2 hypotheses formulated at 0.05 level of significance. The study found among others, that the some of the administrative functions that principals of Bayelsa and Delta States neglect was low in terms of relating well with teachers, Parents Teachers’ Association (PTA) and members of Post Primary Education Board (PPEB), providing adequate security, effective monitoring of external examinations, effective use of time sheet and ensuring adequate provision and maintenance of school facilities. but as the average level of students’ academic achievement was 74.55 for Bayelsa and Delta States. Therefore, the findings show that principals’ administrative negligence did not account for students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in Bayelsa and Delta States respectively. That in Bayelsa and Delta States, there was no significant relationship between administrative functions that principals neglect and students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that principals should be more effective in the discharge of their administrative duties, principals should be exposed to regular seminars and the staff of the Post Primary Education Board should beef up their monitoring functions in public secondary schools in Bayelsa and Delta States.