ABSTRACT
The study investigated teaching manpower adequacy as correlate of pupils’ academic achievement in basic schools in Delta State, Nigeria. The need to proffersolution to the seemingly inadequacy of teaching manpoweras well as the low pupils’ academic achievement in Public Basic Schools in Delta State necessitated this study. To guide this study, 7 research questions were raised,questions 1 and 2 were answered while 3 - 7were hypothesized and tested at0.05 level of significance.
This study adopted a correlational design of ex-post facto approach to measure the relationship between the variables of study. The population of the study comprisedone thousand, one hundred and thirty (1130) Public Basic Schoolsas at 2019/2020 academic session. The sample of the study comprised two hundred and eighty five (285) Public Basic Schools and their head teachers as respondents. The Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table was used to determine the sample while the multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted. Twochecklists were used to collect appropriate data. The face and content validity of the instrumentswere done by the researcher, thereafter the instruments were presented to researcher’s supervisors and three other experts in the Department of Educational Management in the Faculty of Education, University of Benin, for their expert advice, inputs and suggestions. The instruments were not subjected to reliability test because they were checklist. Data collected were coded and analysed using descriptive statistics, such as percentage, graph, ratio, mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics such asPearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient as well as Fisher’s -Z test statistics.
The findings of the study revealed among others that teaching manpower was adequate while the pupils’ academic achievement in Public Basic Schools was high. The test of hypotheses revealed no significant relationship between teaching manpower adequacy (TMA) and Pupils’ Academic Achievement (PAA) in Basic Schools in Delta State. The study concluded that variables such as schools’ location, years of teachers’ experience, teachers’ qualification and class size did not influence teaching manpower adequacy and pupils’ academic achievement in basic schools in Delta State. It was recommended that the government and relevant agencies should ensure that schools that have adequate teacher-pupils ratio be encouraged whereas schools with inadequate teacher-pupil ratio, efforts should be made through the employment and deployment of qualified teachers to meet the NPE required bench-mark in order to enhance pupils’ academic achievement.
