Work-Life Balance and Teachers' Effectiveness in Private Secondary Schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between work-life balance and teachers' effectiveness in private secondary schools in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. The growth of private secondary education in the Federal Capital Territory has placed increasing demands on teachers, and many of these teachers report difficulty in balancing their professional duties with their personal and family responsibilities. Guided by Clark's (2000) work/family border theory, the study adopted a descriptive correlational survey design. A sample of 300 teachers was drawn from an estimated population of 1,200 teachers in registered private secondary schools in AMAC, using Taro Yamane's (1967) formula and a proportionate stratified random sampling technique. A structured questionnaire, the Work-Life Balance and Teachers' Effectiveness Questionnaire (WLBTEQ), adapted in part from Hayman (2005), was used for data collection. Two hundred and seventy (270) copies of the questionnaire were found valid for analysis, representing a 90% response rate. Data were analysed using mean, standard deviation, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation, independent samples t-test, and simple linear regression, all tested at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that private secondary school teachers in AMAC generally reported a low-to-moderate level of work-life balance, while they rated their own teaching effectiveness as moderate-to-high. A statistically significant, moderate, and positive relationship was found between work-life balance and teachers' effectiveness (r = .421, p < .05). Work-life balance was also found to significantly predict teachers' effectiveness, accounting for approximately 17.7% of the variance in effectiveness scores. In addition, female teachers reported significantly lower work-life balance than their male counterparts. The study concluded that work-life balance is a meaningful, though not the only, contributor to teachers' effectiveness in private secondary schools in AMAC. It was recommended that private school proprietors and education policymakers in the Federal Capital Territory should design and enforce clear workload and welfare policies that protect teachers' personal time, as this may, in turn, improve classroom effectiveness.