SCHOOL CULTURE, PRACTICES AND STRUCTURE AS PREDICTORS OF PERFORMANCE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN EDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Quality in education can be seen as fitness for purpose and one indicator of this is the quality of the learning environment within the school system. At play in this environment are factors of school culture, practice and structure and one measure of the quality of schools is students’ performance. The relationship between each of these factors and performance has been variously investigated but their combined predictive ability of performance does not seem to have been examined in the literature. This is the focus of the study. The survey design was utilized in the study. The population consists of all the 1700 teachers in Edo State, Nigeria who teach in the three hundred and nine public senior secondary schools. Out of the schools, 62 schools representing 20% of the schools were selected. From the schools selected, five teachers each of whom teach English Language, Mathematics, Economics, Biology and Christian Religious Studies were selected to provide the information. On the whole, 285 teachers returned usable questionnaires. The draft questionnaire adapted from those constructed earlier by Gruenert and Valentine (1998) was composed of four sections, namely personal information of the teachers, School structure, school practices and school culture. The questionnaire was given to five experts knowledgeable in assessment, educational management and experienced senior secondary school principals. These experts were expected to examine the items on the questionnaire to ensure that they were adequate in content, comprehension and readability. Based on their comments, the items were modified and the resulting instrument was administered to 30 teachers outside the sample used in the study for purposes of determining the reliability using Cronbach alpha. The reliability coefficients that emerged were .78, .83 and .75 for school culture, school structure and school practice respectively. Cooperation of Principals of the schools selected for the study was solicited for the administration of the questionnaire and making available records of WASSCE results for their schools for the year 2018. The performance of the school was calculated by finding a weighted mean for the grades obtained by the students who sat for the WASSCE in each of the subjects and cumulated across the school subjects for each school. Multiple regression was used in the analysis at 5% level of significance. School culture was related to performance while school practice and structure were not. In addition, the three factors were useful in jointly predicting performance in schools. It was therefore recommended that schools should examine these factors properly if they intend to shore up their performance.

Article visualizations: