Management of Students' Records

Tertiary education institutions, whether public or private, have as their primary objectives teaching, learning and research. Thus, they have the mandate to admit and train students. In the course of carrying out this mandate, they generate records and information relating to their students for administrative and educational purposes. Records give the benchmark upon which present and future decisions and activities of organisations are predicated. The bane of the Nigerian higher educational system has, over the years, become loses or misplaced documents and butchered or incomplete files. This resulted from the fact that many Nigerian tertiary institutions do not take records management seriously. Therefore most of their essential records are badly stored and not secured despite the fact that educational records are very vital in the management of educational institutions. This situation does not only impair the smooth, effective and efficient running of the schools but also grossly affects staff and students who often need such records for important purposes. This book is the result of a study that examined the extent of application of management principles to records management practices in Nigeria. The process of study adopted was descriptive design. A population of 78 records managers were involved in the study. Total enumeration sampling technique was used to select the population. The instrument used for the study is questionnaire, and observation was made where necessary. From the study, the following findings were made; the majority of the records managers and officers holds one University degree or the other but no education in the art of records management, there is no institutional control over creation, maintenance and use of records, no policy to guide records management practice, the records management practitioners though receives in-house training from time to time but the trainings are not enough. The study concluded that records management practices in the selected tertiary institutions requires drastic improvement, and that the first step towards improvement is the formulation of a policy to guide records management practice. The study hence recommended amongst others; formulation of records management policy to ensure effective records management programme, development of infrastructures, and provision of adequate training (and re-training) of records management personnel as well as dedicated budgetary funding for records management programme.