ABSTRACT
This study was to investigated the Influence of Private Schools on the Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State., Five research questions were raised and two hypothesis formulated tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population for this study consists of all private and public secondary schools students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. The sample size for this study was 80 JSS2 private and 80 public which makeup of 160 JSS2 students selected through random sampling techniques. The research instrument was a self-structured 30 item English multiple choice questions test designed based on JSS 2 curriculum and 5 items questionnaire. The research instrument used for the study was a self-structured questionnaire. The validity of the instrument was subjected to scrutiny and the test-retest reliability technique was used to ascertain its reliability. The correlation coefficient computed was indicating that the instrument was reliable. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages and means, while ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis.
Results revealed the academic performance of public secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. The data revealed that 23(28.8%), 56(70.0%) and 1(1.3%) of the students scored low, average and high academic performance respectively. This implies that majority of the students in public secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State scored average, while the academic performance of private secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State. The data revealed an obtained mean of 21.013 which is greater than the criterion mean of 15.00, this implies that the academic performance of private secondary school students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State is above average.
In conclusion, private secondary schools students perform better than their counterpart in public secondary schools. From the findings, it can be concluded that lack of educational facilities, ratio of student to teacher, strike, lack of proper supervision and lack of discipline are variables responsible for the difference in the academic performance in public and private secondary school students.
