CHILD’S RIGHTS ACT AWARENESS LEVEL IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The paper investigated child’s rights act awareness level in public secondary schools in Anambra State. Two research questions were answered in the study and one hypothesis was also tested in the course of the study. The design adopted for the study was survey design while the population of the study was 8735 teachers and 110,291 students in the public secondary schools in Anambra State. A sample of 382 teachers and 398 students were drawn for the study using Taro Yamane minimum sample size determination technique. A 20-items questionnaire titled “Child’s Rights Act Awareness Level Questionnaire” (CRAALQ) was used for the collection of data. The questionnaire was validated by two experts in Measurement and Evaluation in the Department of Psychology and Counseling, Faculty of Education, University of Port Harcourt. The reliability of the questionnaire was estimated using Cronbach Alpha statistic with an index of 0.78. The research question was answered using percentage, mean and standard deviation while the hypothesis was tested using z-test statistic at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that teachers and students are not aware of the child’s rights act and there are so many challenges responsible for this. It was hence recommended that more campaign should be carried out using the media to orient teachers and students about the child’s rights act.