THE PROVISION OF CORDIAL RELATIONSHIP BY PTA IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SOUTH WEST REGION OF CAMEROON

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating the provision of cordial relationship by PTA in the management of public secondary schools in south west region of Cameroon. The study was guided by two specific objectives which are; to find out the extern to which friendly relationship between the PTA and the school administration impacts the management of public secondary schools and how conducive environment provided by the PTA and the principal impact the management of public secondary schools. The exploratory research design was adopted for the study. The target population of the study consisted of teachers, principals and PTA officials in the Fako, Meme, Manyu and Kupe Mauenguba divisions. The sample size of the study consisted of 411 teachers, 34 principals, and 102 PTA officials (34 PTA presidents, 34 PTA treasurers and 34 PTA secretary generals), giving a total of 547 respondents. Data were collected using questionnaire, focus group discussions and interview. The reliability analysis of the questionnaire stood at 0.887. The quantitative data were analysed using both the descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of SPSS 25 while qualitative data were analysed thematically. Findings reviled that Descriptively, 59.3% of PTA officials reported a friendly relationship while 40.7% did not reported a cordial relationship which is significant.  Also in aggregate, 65.9% of PTA officials reported a conducive environment with the school administration while 34.1% did not reported a conducive environment with the school administration which is significant. And, further analysis showed that there is a significant, positive and moderate relationship between cordial relationship by PTA and the management of secondary schools (R-value = .308**, p-value = 0.000< 0.05). The positive nature of the relationship implies that management of secondary schools is more likely to be good when the school administration does have healthy cordial relationship with PTA. Therefore, the hypothesis that states there is a significant relationship between cordial relationship by PTAs’ and the management of secondary schools was accepted. In support of the above hypothesis statistics, further analysis using the cross tabulations approach revealed that more of schools with effective management 67.3% are those whose relationship by PTA is cordial which is significantly higher when compared to schools with effective management 40.9% but not having a cordial relationship by PTA (p-value = 0.000 < 0.05). This implies that cordial relationship by PTA significantly affect school management. In addition, the teachers and principals also indicated that cordial relationship between PTA and principals enhances school management, foster the recruitment and payment of teachers as well as provision of infrastructures to the school, contribute in the growth of the school, enhances the attainment of schools goals and objectives, makes it easier for the school to realize it projects, easy communication of school needs and development projects to parents, enable the school to benefit from infrastructural support, and human resources which ease the teaching leaning process, makes it easier for the school to benefit from pedagogic materials and improved school discipline, and help to better lure parents help in the character formation of students. Based on the above findings, it was generally recommended that all PTA should adequately support their schools given that a significant percentage of PTA officials reported little or no support to their school.