EVALUATION OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
PRACTICES IN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION IN NORTH
CENTRAL ZONE OF NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
This study was carried out in North Central states of Nigeria. The main purpose of the
study is to evaluate the human resource management practices in federal and state
colleges of education in the North Central Zone of Nigeria. Seven research questions
were posed and answered by this study and seven hypotheses were formulated and tested
at P < 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study.
The population of the study was 572 consisting of 11 provosts, 11 deputy provosts, 11
registrars, 55 deans of schools, 322 heads of academic departments and 162 heads of nonacademic
departments in the seven states and four federal colleges of education in northcentral
zone of Nigeria, such as Bursary department, registry, public relation, library,
security and department of Health services and so on. There was no sampling because of
the manageable size of the population. However, four (4) provost, their principal officers,
chairmen and secretaries of academic and non academic staff unions from four colleges
of education which comprise 36 human resource managers were selected through
disproportionate sampling technique were interviewed. A 66 item structured
questionnaire titled “Evaluation of Human Resource Management Questionnaire
(EHRMQ)” and an interview guide for human resource management comprise 6 items
were developed based on literature reviewed and used for data collection. The
instruments were face validated by five experts. The internal consistency of the
questionnaire items was determined using cronbach alpha procedure and yielded the
following reliability indices: 0.82, 0.75, 0.88, 0.94, 0.95, 0.94, and 0.90 for the seven
sections of items in the questionnaire. Five hundred and seventy two copies of the
questionnaire were administered to the respondents through eleven (11) research
assistants. Five hundred and sixty nine (569) of 572 copies of the questionnaire
administered were retrieved and used for analyses. Mean (X) and Standard Deviations
(SD) were used to answer the research questions, while t- test was used to test the nullhypotheses.
The results of the study revealed that the federal and state colleges of
education in the north-central zone to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on
staff recruitment, to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff training and
development, to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff appraisals and
promotions, to a little extent comply with approved guidelines on staff welfare practices
and to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff discipline practices. A
major problem of human resource management in both federal and state colleges of
education is political interference in appointment of provosts which does not allow the
best to emerge. It was recommended that: the provosts and other principal officers of the
federal and state colleges of education should strictly comply with procedures for the
recruitment of staff, appraisals and promotions exercises, staff training and development,
staff welfare and discipline practices.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Education holds the key to the success of every sector of the economy. This is
because through education the manpower required for the growth and development of the
nation is produced. Education has been recognized as an indispensable factor in the
social, economic and political advancement of the country. It is seen as the catalyst for
national transformation from a state of underdevelopment through scientific,
technological and social changes to a state of development (Onyia, 2011). The
importance of education for national transformation was aptly captured in the National
Policy on Education (FRN). In this document, education is seen as an “instrument per
excellence for national development” (FRN, 2004:7). Thus, effective education must
develop individuals with comparative advantage to compete favourably in a globalized
economy. This implies that education must prepare individuals for better self-realisation,
better human relationships and effective citizenship for national unity and for social,
economic and scientific progress.
The achievement of the above will depend on effective implementation of teacher
education programme for the production of quality teachers to drive the educational
process. The knowledge, expertise and the ability levels of teachers will determine the
quality of the products of the system (Eze, 2013). The National Policy on Education is
clear on this by asserting that no educational system can rise above the quality of its
teachers (FRN, 2004). This implies that the quality of the products of an educational
system can never rise above the quality of the system that produced it.
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In Nigeria, the responsibility for training professionally qualified teachers has been
entrusted to the following educational institutions provided they continuously meet the
required minimum standards. They include: Colleges of Education, Faculties of
Education in Universities, Institutes of Education, National Teachers’ Institute, and
Schools of Education in the Polytechnics, National Institute for Nigerian Languages
(NINLAN) and National Mathematics Centre (NMC). These teacher educational
institutions have the mandate to produce highly motivated, conscientious and efficient
classroom teachers; encourage further the spirit of enquiry and creativity in teachers; help
teachers to fit into the social life of the community and society at large and enhance their
commitment to national goals; provide teachers with the intellectual and professional
background adequate for their assignment; and make them adaptable to changing
situations and enhance teachers commitment to the teaching profession (FRN, 2004).
For teachers to continually remain professionally competent, the teacher
education institutions including the colleges of education which is the focus of this study
shall be abreast of the changes in methodology and curriculum in order to expose
teachers regularly to innovations and changes in the profession and also provide inservice
training opportunities to remain relevant in the field (FRN, 2004). According to
Ogbonnaya (2005), colleges of education are teacher education institutions established to
provide training designed for developing highly motivated, conscientious and efficient
classroom teachers at the primary and junior secondary school levels of education in
Nigeria. This definition is line with the provision of the National Policy on Education that
colleges of education have the mandate of producing teachers at the Basic Education
Level. These expectations from the Colleges of Education can only be met with the
existence of
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