CHALLENGES OF PRINCIPALS' POST COVID-19 EXPERIENCES AND CURRENT ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN DELTA STATE, NIGERIA

Challenges of post covid-19 experience and current administrative practices of principals in public secondary schools in Delta State, Nigeria is the topic of this research. Expost-facto design was used with a correlational descriptive method. 431 school administrators drawn from 477 public secondary schools in the 3 senatorial districts, involving the 25 local government areas in Delta State. 391 was a sampled used representing 50% of the population. Two-self develop questionnaire constitute the instruments titled: challenges of principals’ post-covid-19 pandemic experiences questionnaire (CPPCPEQ) and current administrative practices questionnaire (CAPQ). Expert evaluation was used to validate the face and content of the instrument. A coefficient of 0.85 was obtained from the reliability test using the Pearson Product (r) statistics. The researchers personally served the instrument and 381 responses were finally retrieved correctly field i.e. 89% returned rate. 2 research questions were raised and answered while research question 1 used descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation, research question 2 used the Pearson (r) correlation coefficient determination. The only hypothesis formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance was tested with linear regression. All the analysis are presented on tables. The findings include the challenges such as; lack of preparation and planning, administrative pressure, stress, fear, and burn-out, adhering to the covid-19 protocols, lack of knowledge of preventive measures to the pandemic, lack of information communication and technology knowledge, decline in students environment and attendance, lack of available funds and finance, and many others. The finding also indicates there was a positive significant association between the challenges of covid-19 pandemic experiences and current administrative practices of principals in public secondary schools in Delta State, Nigeria with the issues of the Covid 19 experiences accounting for 50% of current administrative experiences of principals thus it was suggested the federal, state, and local governments should develop short-term, mid-term, and long-term strategic plans to mitigate epidemics, pandemics, and other natural, unforeseen disasters, and school administrators should follow suit, so that they are not caught off guard, as was the case with the COVID-19 pandemic among others.