Security Awareness as a Panacea for Effective Management of Safe Schools Initiative and Students Academic Achievement in Unity Schools in Nigeria

The study examined security awareness as a panacea for effective management of safe school Initiative and students’ academic achievement in unity schools in Nigeria. Three research questions guided the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprises 104 principals of unity schools in Nigeria. There was no sampling technique adopted since the entire population was manageable. The instrument for data collection was structured questions developed by the researchers titled: “Safe School Initiative Questionnaire (SSIQ)†. The instrument was validated by three experts, two from the Department of Educational Foundations and one in the Department of Science Education (Measurement and Evaluation Unit), all from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability yielded a co-efficient of 0.83 using Cronbach Alpha techniques. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions. The findings of the study revealed that the rationale for launching safe school initiative was to protect Nigeria students in school from being attacks, to reduce the dropout rate, to enable the students to be conscious of security situation in schools, prevent future attacks on schools, and general protection of education sector in Nigeria. The findings of the study also revealed that school based management strategies can be adopted for safe school initiative implementation in unity schools in Nigeria. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendation were made, among other that, federal government should provide safety facilities especially perimeter fencing in unity school in Nigeria.