CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Education has been described as the bedrock of every society and tool for nation building. For a nation to rise as a standard worthy enough for her to compete favorably in the league of nations, such a nation must ensure that high quality in her education is attained and sustained. Quality of teachers’ input in the educational sector brings quality education which is an instrument highly indispensable in the transformation of individuals, values, beliefs and behaviors. (Ehusani, 2002). Ehusani opined that it is a means of preserving societal cultural settings and acquisitions of skills that make members of the society useful to themselves and their society. The process of educating is to develop the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domain of individuals and groups in order to equip them with knowledge and skills necessary to survive and make society progress. Ijaiya (2009) agreed that trained or educated human resources constitute manpower and personnel that bring about national development. That is to say that the amount of educated citizens is equal to the amount of available quality staff that will contribute to a nation’s development. The quality of the staff in the school system presupposes the quality of the school output, that is, the human resources that will be available for the nation (Ochuba, 2009). Ochuba stressed that in the school system, some determinants of high quality education include goals of education, quality of the input as well as a well-organized school system that ensure the articulation and effective co-ordination of all aspect of school life.
Quality assurance is related to accountability both of which are concerned with maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of educational systems and services in relation to their contexts of their missions and their stated objectives. In the words of Ehindero (2004), quality assurance focused on the: learners entry behaviors, characteristics and attributes including some demographic factors that can inhibit or facilitate their learning, teachers entry qualification, values pedagogic stalls, professional preparedness, subject background, philosophical orientation, the teaching/learning processes including the structure of the curriculum and learning environment. Okeke (2008) said that quality assurance is regarded as a process and practice primarily concerned with conformance to mission specification and goal achievement within the publicly accepted standard of excellence. In such case, quality assurance is all these attitude, objectives, actions and procedures that through its existence and use, and together with quality control activities, ensure that appropriate academic standards are being maintained and enhanced in the public school system.
Quality assurance in this context is a programme for the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service, or facility to ensure that standards of quality are being met. Quality assurance as the preventing of quality problems through planned and systematic activities will include the establishment of a good quality management system and the assessment of its adequacy, the audit of the operation of the system, and the review of the system itself. It is one of the most critical tasks facing every nation’s educational institutions, so that the societal demands for improved education service delivery would achieve the best learning outcomes that enhance the quality of life of the citizenry.
The realization of quality assurance practices in schools is through quality assurance mechanisms. Quality assurance mechanisms are those strategies adopted to ensure that goals are achieved. Those mechanisms include monitoring, evaluation, supervision, inspection and control.
Monitoring as one of the mechanisms of quality assurance refers to the process of collecting data at interval about ongoing projects or programme within the school system. The aim of this is to access and know the level of performance with a view of finding out how a set objectives are being met (Ehindero, 2001). Monitoring in this context is refers to the ability of those responsible to periodically access both the personnel and facilities to make sure that they are up to date in other to achieve the objective in the system. This includes the teachers, non-academic staff and the facilities.