Principals’ Administrative Practices and Sustainable School Development among Public Secondary Schools in Oyo State, Nigeria.

This study was conducted to investigate principals’ administrative practices and sustainable school development in public secondary schools in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted a correlational research design with a population of 5,398 teachers in public secondary schools in the 11 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Oyo Central Senatorial District who teach in 17, 244 schools. This study was conducted using a multistage sampling procedure. In the first stage, Oyo Central Senatorial District was randomly selected from the senatorial districts in Oyo State. Six Local Government Areas; representing about 50% of the 11 LGAs, were selected in the second stage. In the third stage, sixty (60) public secondary schools were randomly selected from the sampled Local Government Areas. In the last stage, sixty (60) principals and 540 teachers were selected, giving a total number of 600 respondents. The data collected were analysed using weighted mean and standard deviation for descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, regression and t-test analysis. The study revealed that principals’ administrative practices in public secondary schools in Oyo State were highly rated with a weighted mean of 3.16 while sustainable school development was also highly rated with a weighted mean of 3.07. The study further revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between principals’ administrative practices and sustainable school development (r = 0.62, p < .05). Regression analysis also revealed that principals’ administrative practices significantly contributed towards sustainable school development accounting for 37.9% of its variance. In addition, the study revealed that there is no significant difference between the opinions of principals and teachers on the contribution of principals’ administrative practices towards sustainable school development as evidenced by the reported t-value of 1.65 which was lower than the critical value of 1.96. The study concluded that effective principals’ administrative practices are necessary for the achievement of continuous school development in public secondary schools. It was further recommended that principals should put more effort into instructional supervision, teacher motivation participatory decision making, stakeholder collaboration and monitoring of school improvement initiatives while government should provide sufficient resources and capacity building opportunities for school leaders.