Secondary school administrators’ awareness and preference of using smart building security features for safe school initiative management in Minna, Nigeria

Abstract

Effective security of lives and properties in an educational institution is an important task that can affect the effectiveness and relevance of service delivery. This study investigated secondary school administrators' awareness and preference level of using smart building's security features for safe school initiative management in Minna, Nigeria. The intension of this research is to investigate the extent of secondary school administrators' level of familiarity and preference for adopting smart building security features for school safety management in Nigeria. To achieve the aim of the research, questionnaires were served to 20 registered and regulated secondary schools in Minna. The targeted respondents were drawn from both public and private schools with two school administrators selected per school for the best opinion coverage making a total of 40 questionnaires administered in all The process of selecting the schools follows a systematic procedure (Balloting) which supports random sampling of the schools in the targeted geographical area of the research. The data obtained were analysed based on frequency distribution and percentages rating. The result obtained shows that 35% of the respondents agreed that, they have very high awareness level of using video surveillance also known as Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) as smart building security feature for safe school initiative management while 22.5% of the respondents agreed that, they have very low awareness level about the use of CCTV for the same purpose. In addition, the result analysis also shows that the most preferred smart building security features for safe school initiative management is the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) system with 47.5% of the respondents rating it very high. On the contrary, 17.5% of the respondents agreed that, they have a very low preference level about the use of UPS system for the same aim. It is therefore recommended that more efforts should he deployed towards ensuring uninterrupted power supply in secondary schools for effective safe school initiative management by the school administrators since most of the highly aware smart building security features by the respondents cannot function efficiently without constant power supply.