ABSTRACT
The study investigated school facilities maintenance culture prevalent in Oredo Senior secondary schools. The study was also interested in determining the prevalent school facilities maintenance culture, the level of school facilities maintenance culture, as well as whether differences exist between principals in their school facilities culture based on the variables of sex, location, experience and school size. To guide the study, seven research questions were raised. Two were answered directly while five were hypothesized and tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The study is a descriptive survey which adopted the ex-post – facto research design. The population of the study consisted of all the twenty eight junior and senior secondary principals in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. Twenty principals were selected to form the sample through convenience sampling technique. The instrument used for the collection was titled “School Facilities Maintenance Culture Questionnaire (SFMCQ)”, Face and content validity was carried out with the help of the supervisor. The instrument was found to be reliable with a reliability index of 0.806 through cronbash Alpha statistics. The data collected were analysed using means and standard deviation for the research questions, while t-test statistics was used for the hypotheses.
The findings of the study revealed that school facilities maintenance culture in Secondary Schools in Oredo Local Government Area were preventive, emergency, periodic and replacement. However, periodic and emergency were more prevalent. It was also revealed that the level of school facilities maintenance culture was high, and that differences exist between principals in their school facilities maintenance culture based on sex, location, experience and school size. Specifically, female principals, experienced principals, urban principals and those with small schools performance better in school facilities maintenance culture than male, less experienced, rural and large school principals. It was recommended among others that school facilities maintenance culture should be sustained and encouraged among school principals in addition to providing training and retraining opportunities, as well as, reducing over population in school to make room for efficient and effective school facilities maintenance.
