IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION THROUGH STUDENTS’ HEALTH AND WELFARE MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE
Abstract
Management of students’ health and welfare is central to improving the quality of education. There are
noticeable signs of poor students’ health and welfare services across public and private secondary
schools in Anambra state. This prompted the study to comparatively analyze the health and welfare
practices of principals in public and private secondary schools in Anambra state. Two research questions
guided the study and two hypotheses were tested. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for
the study. The population of the study comprised all the 657 public and private secondary school
principals in Anambra state. No sampling was done due to the relatively small size of the population of
the study. A 18-item questionnaire titled ‘‘Questionnaire for Health and Welfare Practices of Principals’
in Public and Private Secondary Schools (QHWPP)”was the instrument for data collection. The
instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts from Faculty of Education, Nnamdi
Azikiwe University. Cronbach alpha method was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. The
overall coefficient of 0.91 was obtained. The researchers together with the help of six research assistants
collected the data for the study. Mean was used to answer the research questions, while z-test was used
to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study among others revealed
that Private secondary schools principals in Anambra state adopt and engage in students’ health
management practices more than their public secondary schools counterparts. Based on the findings it
was recommended among others that Physical and health education teachers in public secondary
schools should be encouraged by their principals to increase their level of commitment in inculcating
in their students, a positive health awareness attitude with a view to reducing the incidence of diseases.
