COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PRINCIPALS’ INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE, NIGERIA

This study compared the principals’ instructional leadership in public and private secondary schools in Anambra State. Five research questions guided the study and five null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 759 respondents made up of 258 public and 501 private secondary school principals in the state. Cluster and simple random sampling techniques were used to draw 304 principals, which is made up of 103 from public secondary schools and 201 from private secondary schools. A researcher developed questionnaire titled ‘‘Principals’ Instructional Leadership Practices Questionnaire (PILPQ) was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts; who are lecturers, two in the Department of Educational Management and Policy and an expert in Measurement and Evaluation in the Department of Educational Foundations, all in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Cronbach alpha was used for a test of internal consistency of the instrument and it yielded reliability co-efficients of 0.73, 0.74, 0.70 0.77 and 0.70 Clusters I-V respectively and overall coefficient of the entire instrument was 0.73. The researcher and five research assistants collected data for the study using direct administration method. A 100% return rate was recorded. Arithmetic mean and standard deviation scores were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that principals’ engage instructional supervision practices in public and private secondary schools in Anambra State. It was also found out that there is no significant difference in the mean ratings of public and private secondary schools principals’ instructional time management practices in Anambra State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that Ministry of Education should organise instructional time management related refreshers courses for their members to reinforce and upgrade their existing knowledge and skills in managing instructional time. Implications of the study and conclusions were drawn and suggestion for further studies made.