ABSTRACT

The study investigated the relationship between school climate and students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Ovia North East Local Government Area. Five research questions and five null hypotheses were raised and formulated to guide the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted by the study. The population of the study comprised of all the teachers in the twenty eight (28) public secondary schools with a total number of A sample of one Hundred and fifty three (184) respondents was used for the study which represents 10% of the respondents of the total population. They were selected from the population using the stratified random sampling technique. Two research instruments were used for data collection. The first is a West African Examination Council Checklist to determine the quality of students’ academic performance. The second instrument used for data collection was structured questionnaire titled: School Climate and Students’ Academic Performance Questionnaire (SCSAPQ). The validity of the instrument was validated by the researcher’s supervisor as well as two other experts in the Department of Educational Management, University of Benin, Benin City. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation (SD), while Fisher z statistic will be used to test the null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance.

The findings of the study revealed that the school climate in public secondary schools was in a sorry state while the level of students’ academic performance was moderate. It was also revealed that the school climate had significant effect on the academic performance of students as students could not comprehend properly what was taught in class as a result of the dilapidated and overcrowded state of classrooms. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended amongst others that the government should increase her annual budgetary allocation to secondary schools to facilitate the procurement and upgrade of existing facilities in the school to foster the enhancement of the teaching and learning process, the government should regularly and periodically promote teachers to stimulate them to function effectively on their jobs as well as to reduce the rate of attrition amongst them to mention but a few.