Principals' awareness of school laws on students' management in public senior secondary schools in Rivers State

The study examined the extent of principals' awareness of school laws on students' management in public senior secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria, with focus on student disciplinary laws, child rights laws and child protection laws. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study, which adopted the descriptive survey design. The population comprised 1,101 principals and vice-principals in the 367 public senior secondary schools in Rivers State, made up of 367 principals, 367 vice-principals (academics) and 367 vice-principals (administration), from which a sample of 293 respondents (155 male and 138 female) was determined with the Taro Yamane formula and drawn through the proportionate stratified and simple random sampling techniques. Data were collected with the relevant clusters of a questionnaire titled "Principals' Awareness of School Laws on Students' Management Questionnaire (PASLSMQ)", which was validated by three experts and gave Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficients of 0.84, 0.86 and 0.88 for the three clusters, and all 293 copies administered were retrieved and used. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while the independent samples t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that male and female principals were aware to a high extent of student disciplinary laws (3.36 and 3.31), child rights laws (3.29 and 3.29) and child protection laws (3.31 and 3.32), and that there was no significant difference between male and female principals on any of the three categories of school laws. The study concluded that principals in public senior secondary schools in Rivers State have a high extent of awareness of the laws on discipline, children's rights and child protection that guide the management of students. It was recommended, among others, that the Rivers State Ministry of Education should sustain principals' awareness of student disciplinary laws through regular legal-awareness programmes and train principals on child protection and safeguarding procedures.