ASSESSMENT OF COVID-19 CONTROL MEASURES, AWARENESS AND COMPLIANCE AMONG TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MINNA, NIGERIA

Abstract

The few studies on the impact of COVID- 19 pandemic on education reported that most governments around the world temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain its spread. Now that schools have resumed based on the reasonable adherence to the laid down measures of the government on the control measures of COVID- 19 pandemic, it is imperative to carry out a study to assess the awareness of schools of these measures. This study therefore assessed the awareness and compliance of COVID-19 pandemic control measures in public secondary schools in Minna, Niger State between teachers and students. Data were collected with the aid of questionnaire from 375 teachers and 1500students of 15 public secondary schools in Minna, Niger State using purposive sampling technique. The research instrument was subjected to a validity test with a high validity coefficient (Cronbach’s Alpha) of 0.77 obtained. Both descriptive (percentile) and inferential (independent sample t- test at 5% level of significance) analytical tools were employed for data analysis. Results of the study showed high rate of awareness of COVID-19 control measures among teachers and students. It was also found that there exists a non- statistically significant dereference between the percentage of teachers and students that are aware of the control measures of COVID-19 in the 15 public secondary schools studied (p= 0.600 or > 0.05). in addition, the percentage of the teachers that are aware of these control measures is higher than that of the students. Findings also show that both teachers and students have high level of compliance with the control measures of COVID-19 pandemic but the teachers comply more.it was therefore concluded that both teachers and students have high level of awareness of and compliance with the control measures of COVID-19 pandemic except for the measures of ‘contact tracing’ which is not the sole responsibility of the schools’ management. Major recommendation from the study was that school management should always put up mechanism for implementing the ‘contact tracing’ measures in order to act immediately when a case of COVID-19 is found among staff or students in a school.