Principals’ Knowledge of Legal Issues in the Admissions of Junior Secondary School Students in Rivers State

Abstract

The study investigated principals’ knowledge of legal issues in the admissions of junior secondary school students in Rivers State. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted of all 208 junior secondary school principals in Rivers State. The multistage sampling techniques were adopted in selecting the sample size of 132. A structured questionnaire titled principals’ understanding of legal issues in the admissions of junior secondary school students’ questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. Three experts validated the instrument and Cronbach Alpha Method was used to obtain an average reliability coefficient of 0.83. 132 copies of the questionnaire were administered to the respondents but only 121 which 92% of return rate were retrieved and used for the study. The items were rated on a four (4) point rating scale; mean and standard deviation was used to analyze the research questions while z-test was used in testing the formulated hypotheses. The findings reviewed that, junior secondary school principals in Rivers State to a high extent understand government policies and education law in the admissions of students. The researcher recommended that principals should abide by the government policies guiding the admissions of students into secondary schools in the study area to avoid unnecessary court cases against them and principals should be trained and retrained on education law to enable them to increase their understanding of students’ fundamental right as regards their admissions into secondary schools.