APPRAISAL OF QUALITY ASSURANCE PRACTICES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN DELTA STATE

The main purpose of the study was to appraise quality assurance practices in secondary schools in Delta State. To achieve this, seven research questions and seven corresponding null hypothesis were formulated to guide the study. Descriptive survey design was employed for the study. The population for the study was 527 subjects comprising of 452 secondary school principals and 75 school evaluators from Post Primary Education Board. Due to the manageable size of the population, the whole population was used. The instrument for data collection was a researcher-developed questionnaire titled “Appraisal of Quality Assurance Practices Questionnaire (AQAPQ). The questionnaire was structured and designed on a four-point scale. Three experts face-validated the instrument. In the course of the validation, some items were expunged, some re-structured and new ones provided by the experts, before the final draft of the instrument. In order to determine the reliability of the instrument it was trial tested on 20 secondary school principals from the neighboring Anambra State. Crombach’s Alpha method of reliability was adopted. The reliability coefficient obtained from clusters A-G were, 0.75, 0.74, 0.73, 0.85, 0.94, 0.95 respectively; while the over-all reliability co-efficient was 0.96 which was deemed high enough to make the instrument reliable. Data were analysed using both descriptive and parametric statistics. Mean scores and standard deviations were used to answer the research questions while t-test statistics was used to test the null-hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that; physical facilities are not adequately provided in secondary schools; teachers are not professionally developed as supposed, curriculum as found out, is not very relevant to learners’ needs. Fund is not sufficiently provided for secondary education; schools relate well with the host community; whole school evaluation is adequately carried out and motivation of teachers is not taken very good care of. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommends that the state government should provide enough fund for proper management of quality assurance practices, which will result in the achievement of educational goals. Management of Post Primary Education Board should ensure that teachers are developed professionally by organizing seminars, workshops, conferences, the Ministry of education staff should review the curriculum, so that it can equip students with technical and vocational skills which will lead to self improvement. Teacher’s motivation should be taken care of by awarding prizes to hardworking teachers, providing teachers’ security needs and giving letters of recommendation to deserving teachers. This will motivated them to perform their duties very well for optimal result.