Al-Hikmah University Journal

The paper investigated school safety management for effective service delivery in public secondary schools in Delta State. Three research questions were answered and three hypotheses tested in the study. Descriptive survey design was adopted in the study while population of the study comprised all the 466 public senior secondary school principals in Delta State out of which 444 available principals (238 males and 206 females) were purposively sampled. School Safety Management for Effective Service Delivery Questionnaire (SSMESDQ) was the instrument used for data gathering. The questionnaire was face and content validated by two Measurement and Evaluation experts at the University of Port Harcourt with a reliability index of 0.81 using Cronbach alpha statistics. There were 444 copies of the questionnaire administered and 412 copies retrieved which was a return rate of 92.8%. Mean, standard deviation and rank order statistics were used to answer the research questions while z-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study indicated that loss of lives and property as well as injuries were some of the effects of unsafe school. The barriers to adequate safety in the schools that were identified were lack of safety awareness, absence of safety staff among others. Strategies for improved safety such as engagement of safety experts were also identified. It was recommended that principals should be trained on how to handle internal safety issues in the school for better service delivery.