Educational Qualification of Academic Heads of Departments: A Tool for Quality Assurance in Colleges of Education in Nigeria.

Abstract

This study was undertaken to examine the place of Educational Qualification of academic heads of departments in Quality Assurance in colleges of education in north central geo-political zone of Nigeria. A research question was raised to guide the study while a null hypothesis was formulated and tested. Descriptive survey research design was employed. The population of the study comprised all the lecturers in all academic departments in both public and private colleges of education in the north central geo-political zone of Nigeria. The population was drawn from 26 Colleges of Education. A sample of 521 subjects was selected using stratified random sampling technique from 3 strata: private, state and federal colleges of education. Structured Questionnaire on administrative effectiveness of heads of department was used for data collection. Its logical validity index was 0.73. the reliability index obtained was 0.67. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data to answer the research question. The Hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) in order to determine the level of influence of the variable (Educational Qualification). The hypothesis was rejected and not retained. The findings revealed that academic qualification was found to have significant impact on the administrative effectiveness of heads of academic departments viz-a-viz Quality assurance. Based on the finding, recommendations made include Heads of Departments should, on appointment, be exposed to managerial skills to enhance their job effectiveness; the heads of departments should upgrade themselves academically.; the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) need to develop monitoring team with high integrity to access the administrative effectiveness of heads of departments and ensure that only heads of department who are qualified be appointed as heads of department in Colleges of Education; academic qualification should be considered in appointing heads of departments and NCCE should adequately carry out their supervisory roles and ensure that any staff who do not have the requirement to be in the College of Education should not be allowed into the system and the Provost of any school found wanting should be sanctioned.