School Location and Gender as Determinants of Senior Secondary Students’ Performance in Biology Examination in Kaduna State

Abstract

The study examined School Location and Gender as they determined students’ performance in Senior Secondary Schools Biology Examination in Makarfi Local Government Area, Kaduna State”. Among the objectives is to evaluate the performance of male and female students in the Biology Examination (Senior Secondary Certificate Examination) in Makarfi Local Government Area and to assess the performance of senior secondary schools students in rural and urban areas in the Biology Examination (SSCE) in Makarfi Local Government Area. Students comprising both male and female students with a population of 1900 were sampled for the study. Expos facto research design was employed. The researcher designed two research questions, two research objectives and two research hypotheses for the analysis of the data collected from the four selected secondary schools in Makarfi. The percentage and independent t-test were used to analyse the data collected and two hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The research found that male students performed far better than their female counterparts in Biology Examination (Senior Secondary Certificate Examination) in Makarfi Local Government Area and urban students performed far better than those in rural areas the rural students had a mean score of 3.83 with the standard deviation of 0.775, while the urban students had the mean score of 4.65 with the standard deviation of 2.943. The t-calculated of 9.76 is greater than the t-critical of 1.96, while the p-value is .000 (p<0.005. The research concluded that urban students may have performed better than the rural students as a result of teachers not wanting to go to rural schools to teach, students spend so much time on farm work at the expense of the time they should spend on their studies. This implies that students from rural schools who may have the same ability as students from urban schools are limited by some factors that prevent them from being their best in their academics, especially in Makarfi LGA, Kaduna State. The study recommends that government should as a matter of urgency recruit more qualified biology teachers and distribute them equitably to schools irrespective of location, the government should provide incentives that will attract teachers to the rural area and equal supervisory activities by Ministry officials should get to all schools irrespective of location.