ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS TO INFLUENCE TEACHERS’ WORK PERFORMANCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOL

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
 1.1 Background of the Study
The success and development of the school system depends on the quality and nature of the principals’ administrative strategies. This has made teachers’ productivity central to the attainment of modern technology and knowledge production (Ojudu, 2012). For instance, the rapid technological advancement in every sphere of human endeavor comes to the forefront through knowledge explosion and revolution. In this present scenario therefore, roles and functions of teachers as an agent of change has become more critical. In the context of rapid changes, it is imperative that teachers be given opportunities and encouraged to update their knowledge and skills through effective administrative strategies in order to be conversant with the latest developments in their respective field. In the school system, the key stakeholders are: principals, teachers, and other supporting staff, who contribute honestly to school development. In general, the responsibility of teachers is associated with the commitment and efficiency of the principals who shoulder greater responsibilities also in planning, coordinating, supervising, organizing, disciplining and budgeting. Hence, it can be explained that their roles is pivotal in maintaining and raising the standard of creativity and potentialities of the teachers in the secondary education.
The term ‘administration; is often used to mean ‘to execute; or ‘to enforce. However, the job of an administrator involves more than mere execution of plans and decisions made elsewhere. Accordingly, Onyene (2005) noted that where administrative function is reduced to execution, critical details are ignored. According to her, administration is a process of achieving organizational goals through frantic efforts directed towards putting to optimal use every available resource such as human, money, material and entrepreneurial skills. Perhaps it is in this operationally intricate sense that a school of thought reasoned that administration is more complex than management. This is because day-to-day school administration entails critical procedures through which one in a position of authority such as the head teacher or principal discharges his/her responsibilities using the combined efforts of other people. Administration uses organized method to ensure the achievement of the aims and objectives of the school or any organization. Thus, the school administrator such as the principal combines his or her conceptual, technical, and human skills in “performing a garmot of management functions like planning, organizing, staffing, directing, controlling, instructing, communicating, supervising, etc (Onyene 2000). Besides, in a private school situation, Onyene (2005) noted that administration is most tasking because it has to sometimes commence with fundamental issues in structural designing, asking and answering essential questions on enrolment and patronage such as customer relations, customer values and satisfaction, learning and curriculum repackaging and many more. This workload explains why effective school administration is often at crisis level. This is because investors in schools in a bid to break even in terms of cost-benefit employ unqualified persons to head their schools. Thus, the head teacher or principal may not possess those administrative skills which he or she can strategically use for achieving corporate excellence. In actual sense for a private school to attain organizational effectiveness, proper definition of tangible and non-tangible goals is expected. In order words, private school organizations must pursue in a very personal astute manner consciously defined goals and or purposes using the helm of affairs. Once these goals are attained both internal efficiency and “break-even”, normally follow using simple administrative maintenance tips.