School Security Measures as Correlates of Principals’ Administrative Effectiveness in Public Secondary Schools in Ogun State

Abstract

This study investigated school security measures as correlates of principals'ladministrative effectivenesslin public secondarylschools in Ogun State,lNigeria. A correlational researchldesign was adopted. The population comprised 22,806 teacherslin public secondarylschools in Ogun State. A samplelof 400 teachers were selected using proportionate sampling and simplelrandom samplingltechnique to select 100 public secondarylschools across the four educational zones of the State, after which four teachers were randomly selected from each school. Two researcher-designed instruments, namely the School Security Measures Questionnaire (SSMQ) and the Principals' AdministrativelEffectiveness Questionnaire (PAEQ), were used for datalcollection. The reliability co-efficient of .89 and .91 were established using Cronbach’s Alpha. Pearson ProductlMoment Correlation (PPMC) was employedlto test the hypotheses at the 0.05 levellof significance. The findingslrevealed significant positive relationships between physical security measures and principals’ administrative effectiveness (r = .684, p < .05), access control measures and principals' administrative effectiveness (r = .731, p < .05), and emergency preparedness measures and principals’ administrative effectiveness (r = .652, p < .05). The study concluded that effective school security measures enhance principals’ administrative effectiveness by creating a safe and conducive environment for the administration of secondarylschools. It was therefore recommendedlthat the Ogun StatelMinistry of Education and the PostlPrimary Schools Teaching Service Commission should strengthen physical security infrastructure, school principals shouldlimplement effective access control systems, and government should institutionalise comprehensive emergency preparedness programmes through the provision of safety equipment, regular emergency drills and sustained collaboration with security agencies and host communities to improve school safety and administrative effectiveness.