Gender disparity as Correles of trend in academic performance of agricultural science students in West African examination in Ekiti state (2014-2020)

Abstract

This study seeks to find out Trends of Students’ Academic Performance of Private and Public Secondary School in West African Senior Certificate Examination (WAEC) in Agricultural Science in Ekiti State from Year 2014-2020. The Ex-post facto research design was employed. This study population consists of the SSS 3 Agricultural science students in Ekiti State from 2014-2020 with Sample size of 1554. The instrument for data collection was the West African Examination Council (WAEC) results. A Mmulti-stage sampling technique was employed. The first stage, Ekiti state was stratified into senatorial districts. Four senatorial district randomly selected are Ekiti north (Oye local government area), Ekiti South (Ado local government area), Ekiti East (Omuo local government area) and Ekiti West (Aramoko local government area). Second stage, eight secondary schools was selected through purposive simple random sampling techniques, two schools from each senatorial district, one public and one private. Third stage, WAEC result from the selected schools from 2014-2020 was collected for data analysis. Data collected was analyzed using inferential statistics and descriptive analysis for the research hypothesis and research questions respectively. Among the findings of this study, there is significant difference in the academic performance of public and private schools computed χ2 value (105.622) obtained at 3 degree of freedom was significant p<0.05 level. The study shows gender disparity in the performance of public and private. Based on the findings, it was recommended that government should support public schools with effective teaching and learning process of Agricultural Science with adequate teaching-aids, regular supervision and workshop for teachers.