Opinion piece Educational leadership for social change: Positioning school administrators as agents of social change in Nigeria Sunday Nwambam Aja Faculty of Education, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria Introduction This piece centres on how school administrators could be positioned to serve as social change agents for more quality education in Nigeria. As such, school adminis- trators may help change people’s lives positively in Nigeria considering the increasing rate of social vices, religious intolerance, nepotism, and others too numerous to mention. In Nigerian societies, school administrators, as the head or leader in their various schools, are looked upon as individuals who can help to bring about positive change in the lives of people within and around the school. They are seen as expert leaders who can give advice especially in the development of learners and their immediate environment. Within the context of their direct interaction with children, parents and larger soci- ety, school heads could play several major roles in the prevention and elimination of social disorder and other forms of misbehaviour among school children. The activities school administrators undertake to achieve the aims and objectives of education in their schools directly or indirectly help to transform people’s lives and, in so doing, contribute to bring about the desired change in the society. Social change as a phenomenon explains the process involved in bringing about signifi- cant alteration in the behavioural patterns of people that could help to transform cultural and social institutions over a period of time. Apart from home, school, under the guidance of its leadership, is where life-changing knowledge and experiences are acquired. School, which is considered a potential agent of socialization, does not perform these life-changing phe- nomena on its own without the active participation of teachers, students and parents under the collaborative efforts of school head/administrator. Considering the enormous responsibilities of the school administrators, it is therefore necessary that they should be adequately prepared and consciously selected because no education system can rise above the quality of its educators/admin- istrators. It is necessary that school heads who are closer to children at their formative stage of life participate in decision-making and in educational planning and reform so that the desired change in the society through educa- tion could be possible. The very nature of school administrators as advocates of school personnel’s rights makes them effective partners in realizing and maximizing the potential of education in the fight against social disorder. All of the analyses on the relationship between education and child development under the auspices of the school point to the urgent need to improve the status of head teachers and their working conditions so as to address their continuing professional development (Candy, 2003; Kathy, 1994; Rosenya, 2012). These are prerequisites for improving the quality of education in any society, especially in developing coun- tries like Nigeria where most of the youths are misinformed by their culture and/or religion. Nigeria as a developing economy is faced with many challenges including high rate of unemployment, reli- gious intolerance and insurgency as a result of some region’s dissatisfaction with the government due to increasing level of economic hardships orchestrated by high level of corruption in both public and private places. This has, in turn, brought about many youths’ involvement in social vices such as cultism, drug abuse, cybercrime, prostitution, robbery, hostage-taking to obtain money, malpractices in examinations, electoral irregularities, violence of different forms to mention but a few (Aja and Eze, 2017). This has affected all the facets of life in Nigeria to the extent that it has risen to a social problem that requires social change. This accounts for why the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN, 2014) enshrined in the National Policy on Education that Nigeria’s philosophy of education is based on the belief that education is an instrument for national development and social change. Social change as a phenomenon is the change which takes place in the structures of social institutions, as they affect people in relation to their environment. This type of change is usually enhanced through education. The relationship between education and social change according to philosophers is a complex one as some believe that education leads to social change while to Corresponding author: Sunday Nwambam Aja, Faculty of Education, Ebonyi State University, 61 Ogbaga Road, Abakaliki 480001, Nigeria. E-mail: saja4net@gmail.com Management in Education 2020, Vol. 34(2) 84–87 ª 2020 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS) Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0892020620909966 journals.sagepub.com/home/mie MiE