ANALYZING THE PROBLEMS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS:DO THEY HAVE ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE DIGITAL LEADERSHIP SKILLS OF PRINCIPALS?

Abstract

The success of secondary education is critical to the development of success of society as itprepares youths for useful living and higher education. However, much emphasis has been placed on the narrow aspects of the effectiveness of secondary schools. The present study attempted to fill this gap by studying all the dimensions of secondary school effectiveness relationship between private ownership of schools and secondary school effectiveness and ascertaining the linkage with the digital leadership skills of principals. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The population of the study comprised all 294 public secondary schools in the three Education Zones in Cross River State. Stratified sampling was applied to select 150 public secondary schools as the sample for this study. A self-structured questionnaire titled “Digital Leadership Skills and Secondary School Effectiveness Questionnaire (DLSSSEQ) was used as the instrument for data collection. The questionnaire was validated by experts in Educational Management and Measurement and Evaluation at the University of Calabar. Reliability was determined using the Cronbach alpha approach for internal consistency. Descriptive statistics was used to answer the research questions while Repeated measures Multiple Linear Regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis at a .05 level of significance. Results indicate that the extent of secondary school effectiveness in Cross River State islow. It was apparent from the result that principals in the State do not have adequate digital leadership skills. The analysis further indicated that digital leadership skills contribute significantly to secondary effectiveness in Cross River State. The study has practical implications for the Ministry of Education to develop principals on digital leadership skills. This will help them to maintain the effectiveness secondary schools in the State.