Qualitative Record Management Skills for Effective Service Delivery in Nigerian Education System

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For quality service delivery in education system, these two categories of records can again be classified as:

a. Pupils records: admission, progress and withdrawal

b. Teachers records: teaching staff statistics, reports on teachers

c. General staff records

d. Financial records: fees, incomes and expenditure

e. Material records: inventory, assets etc ^{[1, 8]}

Purposes of Record Keeping

Records are kept for the following purposes:

1. To keep the government and the society informed as to the need or otherwise of the further investment to education, the direction as well as the dimension of such investment.

2. To enhance effective guidance and counselling services to be provided for students’ social/academic activities.

3. To provide useful information for higher institutions of learning and employers of labour for placement.

4. To provide effective monitoring for parents and guardians about their children’s education.

5. To provide useful and reliable statistics for educational planning and provide solutions to various educational problems.

6. They enable inspectors/supervisors to assess teachers’ performance

Achievement of these enumerated purposes avails the organization and its members beautiful and qualitative opportunities of benefiting from the documents as well as keeping up with trends.

Benefits of Good Record Keeping

The benefits of good record keeping are described as its importance. These are innumerable. They include:

*Provision of necessary information for decision-making at school systems and co-employers of labour.

• Guidance and counseling purposes.

• The teacher is enabled to access necessary information in guiding the learners.

• Aiding administrative decision-making and efficiency at the school level.

• Saving the school from unnecessary embarrassment and legal tussle.

• Providing direction to the overall development of the school.

• Providing standard means of measuring progress of an individual child in various learning skills

• Providing strong source of assistance to the child.

• A means of assessing the influence of family history on the general behaviour and performance of the child.

• Facilitating monitoring of the movement of children from one school to another ^[3]. In addition ^[1] asserted that record keeping aids teaching and learning, new teacher familiarization with the previous activities in the school, performance appraisal research and for supervisors’ assessment.

Attributes/Qualities of a Good Record

One thing is to keep record and another is to ensure that such records kept are of good quality. Quality records are indispensable in quality decision-making which is the key function of an administration. Administrators should know that poor and inaccurate information outcome are poor planning, poor decision-making hence doom to such an organization. This is why every administrator must be versatile with the basic attributes of a quality record. A good record must therefore possess the following qualities viz:

• Easy storage and retrieval

• Easy to understand and interprets

• Easy to locate and readily available for reference at any time.

• Ability to give detailed/complete information about events.

• Ability to generate further information.

• Ability to be utilized to take appropriate actions on what it is collected for ie. good records must be valid and reliable ^[2].

• Must be found as hard and soft copy for free access without physical barriers

Good Record Maintenance Culture

An administrator that takes pain to prepare and keep quality record should endeavour to have a good maintenance culture. The researcher has observed with regrets, that one of the glaring problems facing today’s effective management of education in Nigeria is total lack of maintenance culture. This is more appalling when government has made every effort to make funds available for the provision of school facilities for teaching and learning resources. The importance of school records in effective and efficient management of the Nigerian education system as earlier pointed out has called for necessity in adequate record keeping maintenance culture. There are issues that can lead to poor maintenance culture in Nigeria education system.

Issues Associated with Quality Record Keeping Maintenance Culture in Nigeria

Some of the issues are:

1. Incomplete and unreliable sources of data.

2. Improper entries, inaccurate, incomplete and incorrect documentation.

3. Improper, poor and inadequate storage facilities.

4. Duplication of records.

5. Organized falsification of data.

6. Failure of government/school management to make available the necessary official registers for correct documentation.

7. Lack of training in school record keeping.

8. Some of the school heads do not see the urgent need of keeping quality records.

9. The documents for keeping the records were seldom standardized.

10. Increasing retention of useful but outdated records.

11. Inadequate safe space for storage of such volumes.

12. Record keeping approach is still more of analogue

13. Lack of safe guard on the confidentiality and accuracy of the records ^[1].

Skills Imperative for Quality Record Management in Secondary Educational System

It should be noted that quality administration is not only judged or assessed by school administrators’ professional competence in leadership style but also on his level of record keeping professional competence. There abound many ways to quality record keeping in school system. According to ^[5] skills imperative for quality service delivery in secondary school system abound. Some of the skills are Skills of effective filling in cabinets, using computer (e-record keeping), using audio and video cassettes, keeping non-falsified data, proper records classification, using drawers and shelves, use of flash drive and CD ROMs, avoiding mutilation of the records, maintenance of secret record, proper management of the books in shelves/cabinet, good record keeping maintenance culture. Others include:

1. Use of drawers and shelves

2. Use of computer (e-record keeping)

3. Use of audio and video cassettes

4. Avoiding mutilations of the records

5. Ensuring top secret record maintenance

6. Proper management of the books in the shelves/cabinets.

2. Legal Implications of School Records Keeping

Majority of school administrators and classroom teachers appear not to know the legal implications of keeping the expected school records. Education Edict of 1974 of the East Central State of Nigeria indicates that:

1. Any person responsible for keeping the records prescribed by regulation 3 or 4 who fails to produce the books and records so prescribed shall be guilty of an offence.

2. Any person responsible for submitting statement of accounts, voucher or other documents required to be submitted under the provision of regulation 5 who fails to do so shall be quality of an offence.

3. Any member of Management Board of an Institution in which the person is responsible for keeping the records as prescribed by regulation 3 or 4 and who fails to keep or produce the books and records so prescribed shall be guilty of an offence.

4. A person convicted of an offence under these regulations shall be liable to a fine of one hundred naira.

5. Every school administrator should be knowledgeable over this. Administrators and educational experts should imbibe the basic skills in keeping these records.

Part of the skills required are ability to keep the record well, ability to recognize the importance of an issues, a duty and an expected role. Lack of these abilities (skills) apparently will lead to failure or snail speed progress in such school system.

The situation in Nigerian education system seems to be that of inadequate skills of record keeping by the school administrators and their staff. This poor record keeping culture appears to be responsible for the low advance tone as well as students poor academic performance. This in turn seems to hamper level of attainment of quality teaching and learning in the school system. Against the above background and reviewed literature that the paper examined qualitative management skills for effective service delivery in Nigeria Education System with special reference to south east geo-political zone. Specifically attention was on:

a. availability of records needed for effective service delivery in secondary education system

b. Staff attitudes toward quality record management.

c. Extent of the utilization of the available record kept.

d. Level of records keeping skills of both the administrators and teachers.

e. Identification of the impeding factors to quality record keeping in Nigerian schools.

f. Way forward to quality record keeping in the school system.

2.1. Research Questions

1. To what extent are expected vital school records available for effective service delivery in secondary schools in Nigeria?

2. What is the attitude of staff towards record management as a veritable instrument for enhancing teaching and learning?

3. To what extent are statutory records being utilized for effective service delivery in Nigerian secondary education system?

4. To what extent do staff possess the skills of quality record management for effective service delivery in secondary schools?

5. To what extent do the identified impediments in the literature reviewed still impede the quality record management in secondary schools in the study area?

6. To what extent could the solutions proffered serve as items for enhancing staff record management skills?

3. Method

Descriptive survey design was deemed adequate for describing the existing situations and assessment of qualitative record management skills for effective service delivery in the secondary schools in Anambra State of Nigeria. All the 260 Administrators and 5,800 classroom teachers in public secondary schools in the six educational zones in Anambra State of Nigeria constituted the population of the study.

All the 260 principals (School administrators) were used for the study because of its small size while 1000 classroom teachers were sampled through proportionate sampling technique from the 6 education zones (Anaocha – 601, Awka – 2006, Nnewi – 892, Ogidi – 510, Onitsha – 1,508 and Otuocha – 283). This gave total respondents of 1,260 (260 principals and 1000 teachers). A 52-item researcher’s self- made structured questionnaire built on a 4-point-scale and titled Quality Record Management Skills Questionnaire (QRMSQ) was used to generate data for answering the research questions. The content and face validity were established by two experts from Department of Educational Foundations, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike Abia State of Nigeria. The instrument was subjected to test-retest and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient statistical tool was used to obtain a reliability index values of 0.73, 0.80, 0.85, 0.83, 0.85 and 0.82 for the six clusters respectively.

With the help of four trained research assistants, the researchers administered 1,260 copies of the QRMSQ instrument to 1,260 respondents. Out of the 1,260 copies 1,256 were returned and used for the data analysis. That indicated 99.7% return rate. Mean and grand mean were used to answer and analyzed the research questions. Decision rule is that items scoring less than 2.50 weighted mean were regarded as negative response or disagree or low extent while scores above 2.50 were seen as positive response to the items (i.e. agree or high extent). The interval scale ratings for the data presentation in the six tables shown below are as follow:

Interval rating scale used in the tables below

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4. Results

The mean score responses to the items were compiled and interpreted from the data and presented in tables below, according to research questions as shown below.

Table 1. Availability of vital records needed for effective service delivery in Nigerian secondary education system

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Table 2. Attitudes of school Staff towards quality record management

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Result in Table 1 reveals 3.67 and 3.45 grand means responses of principals and teachers in secondary schools in Anambra State respectively. The grand means scored above 2.50 weighted mean indicating the general agreement of both respondents that all the ten items are always available to high extent for educational service delivery and that they serve as vital records that must be kept for smooth and effective educational service delivery. Item by item analysis revealed that only 8 out the 10 items were available to high extent and are also the vital records that must be kept for quality management. Items 6 and 10 indicated varied opinions from both the respondents. While principals agreed that corporal punishment books are vital records and are always available, classroom teachers disagreed that they are available to a low extent. Teachers agreed to high extent that lesson notes are available to high extent while the administrators (principals) agreed that they are available to a low extent. In conclusion, the two items are available to low extent for quality educational service delivery.

Result in Table 2 reveals grand means 1.98 and 2.01 for both administrators and teachers respectively scored below 2.50 indicating their general disagreement with all the 7 items as staff attitudes towards record management. This implies low extent positive attitude to record management.

Table 3. Extent of utilization of records kept in schools for effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery in secondary education system

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Data in Table 3 shows grand means of 2.62 and 2.47 for the administrators and classroom teachers respectively. The grand means are below the dichotomy mean indicating administrators and classroom teachers’ general disagreement with the items. This observation also reveals that the items (records available and needed for effective service delivery) are utilized to a low extent. The result also show that only 4 items out of the 10 items represent records that are utilized at a high extent for quality education service delivery (time-table, Diary, continuous assessment and register of admission). Continuous assessment scored highest indicating the wide agreement that it is a record that majority of the teachers utilized. In effect, the afore-mentioned records are school records utilized for effective educational service delivery in secondary schools in Anambra State of Nigeria.

Table 4. Extent of possession of skills for quality record management by staff

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Result in Table 4 has grand means of 1.83 and 2.03 for administrators and teachers respectively indicating general disagreement of the both respondents on that the staff of secondary schools in Anambra State of Nigeria possess the necessary skills for managing the itemized records to a high extent. The implication is that both the administrators (principals) and classroom teachers possess the required skills to a low extent for effective education service delivery. It was observed that only the skills for managing continuous assessment records alone was possess to a high extent.

Table 5. Extent of Impediments to staff possession of adequate skills for records management

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Results in Table 5 show grand means of 3.43 and 3.45 of principals and classroom teachers respectively. The grand means and individual item mean scored above 2.50 indicating that all the 7 items listed are to high extent impediments to the staff effective record management and skills acquisition.

Table 6. Suggested Solutions to Impediments to the staff inadequate record management skills

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