Security Management Practices For Enhanced Safe School Environments in Public Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined security management practices for enhanced safe school environments in public tertiary institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive research design was adopted. The population comprised all the 44 Principal Officers in the 7 public tertiary institutions in Rivers State. Out of these Principal Officers, 27 are males whereas 17 are females. The entire population, which represents 100%, was used as the sample which infers the use of census sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was 18 item self-structured questionnaire entitled: “Security Management Practices for Enhanced Safe School Environments Questionnaire (SMPESSEQ).” internal consistency of the instrument was determined using the Cronbach’s Alpha. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were tested using z-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed, among others, that security practices are managed in very low extent. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among others, that School Management should always endeavour to equip the security personnel in best security practices by exposing them to capacity building programmes to improve on their skills and providing them with adequate security infrastructures that will enable them to curb crimes on campuses.