TITLE:
Comparative Performance of Senior Secondary School Agricultural Science Students in Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government Areas of Kaduna State, Nigeria
AUTHORS:
M. R. O. Onwunali, H. B. Muhammad, B. I. Balogun
KEYWORDS:
Agricultural Science, Achievement, Enrolment, Gender, School Types, Location
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.5,
May
31,
2022
ABSTRACT: The study focused on the comparative effect of enrolment, school types,
and gender on the achievement of Senior Secondary Agricultural Science students
in West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results in
Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government Areas of Kaduna State. Twelve public and
private schools were randomly but purposefully selected based on location and
certification by the West African Senior Secondary Examination Board. Data were subjected to simple descriptive
statistics, chi-square and analysis of variance at p ≤ 0.05. Results showed that of the 3663 candidates, 52% comprised 30.1%
male and 21.9% female, and 48% made up of 28.5% male, and 19.5% female enrolled
in Sabon Gari and Zaria, respectively. The high significant X2 value of 158.5 between
location and school type indicated bias in enrolment. The significance difference (p ≤ 0.05) in school types showed that, although general performance was poor,
Sabon Gari out-performed Zaria students with mean grade of 46.59 and 43.36 corresponding to D7 and E8, respectively. However, quality of performance revealed that
private schools in Sabon Gari were better (29.05%) than public (19.87%) while
public schools in Zaria out-performed (22.04%) private schools (21.75%).
Results also showed that gender was not a determinant factor to performance as
there was no significant difference in the interaction between male and female
students in both locations. However the quality of performance and mean scores
were high in Sabon Gari (46.10%) compared to Zaria (44.52%). Therefore,
location and school types had a strong influence on the performance of
agricultural science and not gender. Hence efforts should be geared towards
providing facilities, trained and qualified teachers, regular and sincere
supervision and monitoring to facilitate students’ interest, attitude and
performance in the subject.