Assessment of principals’ violation of students’ rights in secondary school administration

Thesis Abstract

The study was designed to assess principals’ violation of students’ rights in
secondary schools, in Kogi State Nigeria. It aims at finding out the extent to
which the principals are aware of students rights, assess the extent to which
students right to life, dignity of human person, right to personal liberty, right to
fair hearing are being violated by principals. The design used for the study is
descriptive survey. Six research questions and six hypotheses guided the study.
The target population for the study was 47,388 students, teachers and principals
from 345 schools in Kogi State. The sampled population was 6,191 comprising
138 principals, 1,794 teachers and 4,259 students from 138 sampled schools.
The instrument used for the study was the (PASRVQ) Principals’ Awareness of
Students’ Rights Violation Questionnaire. Means and standard deviation were
used to answer the research questions. The internal constituency and reliability
of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha method. The reliability
coefficient of the instrument obtained from cluster A-F is 0.83, 0.69, 0.81, 0.75,
0.92, and 0.87 respectively. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe test were
used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study among
others revealed that to a great extent principals are not generally aware of
students rights and therefore violate students right to life, dignity of human
person, right to personal liberty and right to fair hearing. Accordingly the study
recommended that principals should be made properly aware of students
rights, through the conferences, seminars, workshops and further studies.
School rules should be made public, school plant facilities should be made safe
for use, students are to be given opportunity to express opinions and be involved
in decision making process. Teacher capacity building curriculum should
incorporate element of education law and human rights education should be
incorporated in secondary school curriculum.

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