PRINCIPALS’ PERCEIVED IMPACT OF TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL QUALITY ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

This study investigated principals’ perceived impact of teachers’ professional quality on the academic performance of public secondary school students in Anambra State. Three specific purposes, three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all the 266 secondary school principals in public secondary schools in Anambra State which was used as sample for the study. Structured rating scale titled “Teachers’ Professional Quality and Academic Performance Rating Scale (TPQAPRS)” was used for data collection. The instrument was face validated by three experts in Faculty of Education Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Internal consistency co-efficient of 0.874, 0.825, and 0.910 were obtained using Cronbach Alpha statistical method. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to answer the research questions while the independent t-test was used for testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The p-value was used to determine the significance of the difference for all hypotheses. The findings revealed that principals perceived that teachers’ professional quality (teachers’ qualification, teachers’ use of instructional materials and teachers’ management skills) has positive impact on students’ academic performance. The findings also revealed that there is no significant difference on the mean ratings of urban and rural principals’ means responses on the principals’ perceived impact of teachers' professional quality on students’ academic performance. The study concluded that for students to improve on their academic performance, teachers must continue to improve their professional quality. Based on the findings of the study, the researchers recommended amongothers that secondary school teachers should periodically be given opportunities to update their knowledge and skills through in-service training and retraining courses to increase their knowledge base of their subjects. Principals on the other hand should ensure that the potentials of the teachers are well harnessed and utilized to reflect the true picture of their quality in the academic performance of students.