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Principals’ Digital Literacy and Effective Administration of Private Secondary Schools in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State

ABSTRACT

This study examined principals’ digital literacy and effective administration of private secondary schools in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State. The study was guided by three research objectives from which three research questions were posed and five hypotheses were tested. The study adopted a correlational survey design with a population of 718 school administrators in government approved private secondary schools in Port Harcourt Metropolis. The sample size of the study was 143 respondents comprising 103 principals in Obio/Akpor and 40 principals in private secondary schools in Port Harcourt Local Government Areas respectively. The proportionate stratified sampling technique was adopted in selecting 20% of the population of schools in Obio/Akpo LGA to arrive at 103 principals and 20% of the population of schools in Port Harcourt LGA to arrive at 40 principals.. The instruments for data collection were researcher-designed questionnaires titled Principals’ Digital Skills Questionnaire” and “Effective School Administration Questionnaire”. respectively. The instruments were validated by three experts, one expert in Educational Management, and two other experts in Measurement and Evaluation. The internal consistencies of the instruments were determined using the Cronbach Alpha statistics. Reliability coefficients of 0.71, 0.70, 0.82 and 0.75were obtained for the various clusters of the study. The research questions were answered and the hypotheses tested using Pearson Product Moment Correlation statistics. The hypotheses were further subjected to t-transformation to establish the significance of the r-value at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the analyzed data revealed that there is a high positive relationship between principals’ acquisition of basic ICT skills, principals’ digital communication skills and effective administration of private secondary schools in Port Harcourt metropolis, Rivers State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that Education authorities and school proprietors should implement targeted training programmes to improve principals’ acquisition of basic ICT skills. These programs should focus on practical applications such as managing digital records, scheduling, and using tools for performance tracking. Regular workshops and certifications in ICT proficiency should be made mandatory for all school administrators.

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