Quality assurance efforts and public secondary school students’ academic performance in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The current educational problems of public interest based on poor level of students’ academic performance especially in public examinations, at schools and various higher institutions call for concern. The study is on the relationship between quality assurance efforts and students’ academic performance in Cross River State public Secondary Schools, Nigeria. ‘Efforts’ in this instance, refer to quality assurance measures put in place to ensure standard in the education system, these include; teachers’ quality, instructional supervision, provision of facilities/infrastructures, adequate class size, teachers’ welfare, community involvement, and conducive learning environment. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study include all the 5,130 teachers in the 262 public secondary schools in Cross River State, Nigeria. The researcher randomly sampled 47 and 78 teachers from Bekwara and Ogoja LGAs respectively making a total of 125 respondents. The instrument used for data collection was 15-item Quality Assurance Effort Questionnaire (QAEQ) scored on 4-point rating scale. To ensure face and content validity of the instrument, drafted copies of the instrument were given to two experts in Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the instrument was determined through split-half pilot test giving a value of 0.78. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to analyze the data to answer the research questions. The study revealed that there is moderate, positive and significant relationship among teachers’ quality, school environment and facilities and students’ academic performance. It was recommended that teachers with good qualifications should be recruited into the secondary school system, government should make a concerted effort to provide facilities and equipment in schools, a conducive teaching and learning environment, and quality instructional materials in Secondary Schools should be ensured.

Keywords: Quality Assurance, Academic Performance, environment, facilities and teachers’ qualities