Assessment of Principals? Assertiveness on the School Attendance of Nigerian Female Students Living and Working as Maids

This study was embarked upon as an assessment of school principals' assertiveness on the school attendance of Nigerian female students living and working as maids. Eight research questions and eight null hypotheses guided the study. The survey research design was utilized for the study. The target population was the 257 school principals in the six education zones in Anambra State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling was utilized in selecting four education zones for the study, out of which 96 principals were selected as the sample of the study. A questionnaire was used to elicit information from these school principals and 82 of them duly filled and returned theirs. The research questions were answered using the statistical mean, while the null hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistic at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that that male principals did not have any knowledge of female students who work as housemaids or engage in commercial activities when they should be in school, and that both rural and urban school principals had limited knowledge of female students who work as maids in homes or in commercial ventures, among others. The hypotheses testing revealed that male and female school principals' knowledge of students who work housemaids or engage in commercial activities significantly differed, and also there was no significant difference in rural and urban location response ratings of school principals on their enforcement of school attendance for housemaids and female students used as labour in commercial activities. It was recommended that principals should show more interest in the personal lives of their students, as this could be contributory to their absenteeism from school, and that government should come out with a whitepaper on school attendance, the flouting of which would lead to sanctions against offending masters and mistresses of female students who work as maids in homes and in commercial ventures.