Comparison of Teaching Personnel Competence on Secondary Schools Students’ Academic Performance in Mathematics

Abstract

This study compared the teaching personnel's competence in secondary school student’s academic performance in Mathematics. To this end, five research questions and two research hypotheses were proposed. The data was collected from twenty secondary schools in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State. One hundred (100) students and teachers were selected to participate in this study. The instruments used were Students’ Attitude Towards Mathematics Questionnaire (SATMQ) and Teachers’ Attitude Towards Mathematics Questionnaire (TATMQ). T-test and regression statistics were used to analyse data at 0.05 level of confidence. The findings indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the students’ attitude towards Mathematics in public and private secondary schools. Also, there was a statistically significant difference between the professional status of teachers in public and private secondary schools. This implied that there are more professional qualified teachers in public schools than their private school counterparts which could have positive influence on students’ academic performance in Mathematics. There was, however, no statistically significant influence of teachers’ competence on students’ academic performance of public and private secondary schools in Mathematics. Invariably, this implies that teaching personnel competence is not the only contributing factors on students’ academic performance in Mathematics. Therefore, there was no statistically significant influence of the students’ attitude on the academic performance of public and private secondary schools in Mathematics.