ABSTRACT

The study was conducted to ascertain the influence of Principals’ Personal Variables on Administrative Effectiveness in Cross River State. The study was necessitated by the need to examine what could lead to effective administration of public secondary schools by principals. In an attempt to provide empirical solution to address this need, there was need to investigate principals’ personal variables. Five specific objectives of the study and five research questions guided the study with five hypotheses tested at .05 level of significance. The design of the study was descriptive survey research design. The population of the study was 3,691 while the sample size was 351 obtained using Krejcie and Morgan table for estimating sample size. A proportionate stratified random sampling technique using a sample fraction of .095 to select the respondents that was used for the study. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire with 39 item statements. The instrument was face and content validated by three research experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using the Cronbach alpha statistic to determine the internal consistency which yielded a reliability coefficient of .76. Data collected from the respondents were answered using mean and standard deviation for all the research questions while the t-test statistic was used to test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The study revealed that professional qualification, years of experience, academic training and N.C.E. programme influence principals’ administrative effectiveness. The study also revealed that sex has no influence on principals’ administrative effectiveness. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made; the government and Ministry of Education should ensure that teachers with professional qualification are sought after in the appointment of principals in the secondary schools since it has been found that professional qualification influences administrative effectiveness. Also, the government and Ministry of Education should ensure that teachers with higher years of teaching experience are given priority in the appointment of principals in the secondary schools since it has been found that years of experience significantly influence administrative effectiveness. The government and Ministry of Education should equally ensure that principals and teachers are being retrained regularly so as to equip them with the necessary skills for administrative effectiveness. This will help to improve their professional skills and fast-track the achievement of the objectives of secondary schools in Cross River State