Motivational Strategies Adopted by Principals Towards Improved Academic Performance of Students in Secondary Schools in Enugu State Nigeria

Abstract

The seeming decline in academic performance of students in public and private secondary schools in Nigeria necessitated this study on motivational strategies of principals for improved academic performance of students in public and private secondary schools in Enugu State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. One research questions guided the study, while One hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study comprised 8, 362 and 17,217 teachers in the 256 public and 923 private secondary schools respectively in Enugu State.

The sample for the study comprised of 1,100 teachers made up 0f 500 teachers from public and 600 teachers from private secondary schools drawn through a proportionate simple random sampling technique. A researcher’s developed questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts who are lecturers, two in Educational Measurement and Evaluation, Department of Educational Foundations and the other in Educational Management and Planning, Department of Educational Management and Policy all in the Faculty of Education Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State Nigeria.

The Cronbach’s alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency of the items which yielded an overall reliability coefficient of 0.72. The researchers with the help of ten research assistants distributed and successfully collected the copies of the questionnaire administered. The research questions were answered using the arithmetic mean while the hypotheses were tested using t-test. It was found among others that principals in public and private secondary schools in Enugu state to a high extent adopt motivational strategies for improved academic performance of students. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended  among others that principals should ensure that their teachers are adequately motivated through award of prizes and payment of honorarium to teachers for extra or additional duties performed.