Appraisal of the Administrative Task Areas and Competencies Required of Colleges of Education (Technical) Administrators in Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of performance of (a) staff personnel administrative task (b) students personnel task (c) facilities and tool maintenance task and (d) school-community task by the Colleges of Education (Technical) administrators. The study also aimed at finding out the extent of possession of specific competencies required of the administrators for the effective performance of their work. Similarly, the study also ascertained measures that could be adopted to improve the administrators’ competencies within the area of technical skills, human relation skills, conceptual skills and communication skills. The study answered six research questions and tested nine hypotheses. The hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. The target population for this study consisted of all the 220 immediate past and present academic staff in all the eight Federal Colleges of Education (Technical) who held administrative positions. The entire population was used. Hence no sampling was done. Questionnaire was used for data collection. Of the 220 copies of the questionnaire administered to administrators of the eight Colleges of Education (Technical) 202 (92.2%) were correctly completed and returned and were used for data analysis. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t- test. The results revealed higher extent of performance in some of the administrative sub task areas by the administrators. Analysis of data collected showed that the administrators possessed to a great extent technical skills, human relation skills, and conceptual skills and communication skill competencies. Some of the task areas where administrators were performing to a great extent are: participation in the organization of workshops and seminars for staff development and involvement of students in the management of workshop laboratory. Examples of the areas where the extent of their performances was low are: actively developing a system of staff personnel policies, the needs of special or handicapped students, participation in the school-community projects. Some of the competencies needed to be improved upon by the administrators are in the following areas: technical skill competencies, human relation skill competencies, conceptual skill competencies, and communication skill competencies. The following are recommended ways of improving the competencies possessed by the college administrators: (a) attendance at seminars, workshops and conferences should be made mandatory for the administrators and lecturers, (b) Special short/refresher courses should be organized for the college administrators, (c) organization of work experience training programme for administrators should be made compulsory, (d) administrators of Colleges of Education (Technical) should be specially trained vocational and technical educators so as to make the college programme effectively executed.