CHAPTER ONE
Background to the Study
The aim of the education in every society of the world it to develop the young ones to become a useful adult. Although education varies in different societies of the world, but education remains the bedrock of every society. Therefore, any nation that toys with education is definitely sitting on a key of gunpowder and this is bound to explode. For the goal of education to be achieved in a nation the principal actors of learning is the teaches, the learner’s and the environment must be co-operatively organized. The aim of education in the olden days include moral and spiritual development which reflects in the societal system of thought and beliefs and these in turn, have great influence on the economic activities of its members. For example the African traditional society is replete with people whose mind have been observed with magical religious system of thoughts, as nduka putss !! (Waste. 1999). Here the society regards every fortune as coming from one or more of its numerous Gods as well as their spirits. In such an environment, progressive thinking is almost impossible.
The success of any organization depends to a large extent upon the leader of the organization the effectiveness of any secondary schools in attaining its objective. Depends on the chief executive at school level otherwise known as the principal. The principal helps to integrate the teachers, non-teaching staff, students and other resources into a productive working mechanism and student performance by influencing teachers behaviors and beliefs through corrective supervisory activities, co-operation, motivation, effective communication and evaluation for the achievement of educational objectives. The principals perform dual functions as a professional and administration. As an administrative duties like planning and conduct of meeting, attending to mails, visiting ministries to resolve school problems etc principal as a professional engage in curriculum design recruit and deploy and source of material resources to assist teaching staff. As put by okeke (1985), The bigger the situation to be managed or administered the more complex the leadership needed and the greater the task involved. of the usefulness of all these activities. It is only when the principal is able to recognize and adopt right leadership styles that he would get his subordinates to interact freely with him on continuous based. In this way, they will together pursue common goals. The teacher has personal goals and needs which he or may not be conscious of it may therefore be reasonable argued that workers behavior in work places are reaction, and action of the head colleagues students and their entire environment.
The falling standard of education has all been attributed to the fact that most of the school principals’ has failed to exhibit good leadership required for the effectiveness of the school system. Furthermore, other people think that leaders are responsible for this poor performance of students. While others even believed that the students are also responsible for their academic performance as majority of them disobey school rules and regulations and no longer ready to work and some believed that the government should be held responsible since it has failed to satisfy the needs of teachers. From the various comments it could be generally agreed that all the various components of the educational system has their own allocation of the blame. The attitude of a principal towards his subordinates would influence the behavior of the teacher in a significant manner and this in turn effects students academic performance they can then be assumed that, the level of interaction of principal with their teachers would directly or indirectly determine student level of performance in their tasks. The principal should examine the performance of the school personnel to determine how for the set objectives are being achieved Where performance deviates from the desired result, he undertakes corrective measures guiding counseling and coaching the personnel concerned. In the case of staff he may even encourage them to go for higher education and training in order to acquire the desired competencies and establish good moral through their leadership styles. Promised on the backgrounds discussed so far, this study seeks to investigate into the principals’ human relation strategies and teachers’ job performance in Patigi Local Government area Secondary schools, Kwara State.