Abstract
A study was conducted to investigate factors that affect students’ poor performance in physical science examinations at Malawi School Certificate of Education and Junior Certificate of Education levels in Community day secondary schools (CDSS) in Lilongwe Rural West Education District in Malawi. Students’ performance was collected from schools’ Malawi National Examination Board results. Focus group discussion and personal interviews with students, teachers and parents were conducted. Regression analysis, Pearson Correlation and wilcoxon tests were run to determine relationship, correlation and level of significance between the identified factors and students’ performance. Analysis of variance, level of significance and standard error deviations (SED) were worked out using SPSS 17.5 version. Results indicate that students’ performance in un-approved CDSSs were significantly poor and different from approved CDSS (p<0.01, a=0.001), day secondary schools (p<0.05, α=0.05) and national secondary schools in Lilongwe. Students’ performance in CDSS without subject specialist was significantly low and different from CDSS with subject specialist (p<0.001, a=0.05). Students’ higher frequency of outings and absenteeism strongly correlated with poor students’ performance and greatest record of students’ absenteeism in physical science lessons was recorded in rural CDSS and un-approved urban CDSS. Empirical models of the students’ performance was more skewed towards poor performers than excellent performers in CDSS, unapproved CDSS, rural CDSS, CDSS without subject specialist, CDSS with majority of students operating from own home or in self-boarding hostels and CDSS with majority of students lacking home support or parental involvement in their education. Lack of or poor home support, high frequency of students’ absenteeism, late reporting for classes and absence of subject specialist ranked high in impeding students’ performance in both rural CDSS and unapproved CDSS in the study area. Education authorities should consider addressing the raised factors in order to level ground for students’ performance in national examinations in all secondary schools. Key words: Performance, students, community day secondary school, physical science.
Highlights
The results indicate that chronic absenteeism could be the likely factor that impaired students’ meaningful and effective learning (Balfanz and Byrnes, 2012) in Community Day Secondary Schools (CDSS)
B confirming that students in schools with qualified teachers perform better (Myrberg and Rosen, 2014), underscoring the significance of high quality teacher education program prepared for teaching in specific subjects at secondary school level (Myrberg and Rosen, 2014)
The results indicate students’ performance was negatively influenced by under qualification or Physical science Teachers in rural CDSS
Summary
Performance in Physical science was poor in both CDSS and conventional day secondary schools (MANEB, 2013a; MANEB, 20143) despite being a prerequisite subject to most tertiary science careers. The noted poor performance in Physical Science examinations at JCE and MSCE in CDSS (especially unapproved CDSS) could reflect the incompetence of teachers in classroom interaction with students (Smaldino et al, 2008; Long et al, 2014). Majority of parents in cities and urban areas have appreciable education of some kind (MIE, 1998) which may make them value educational achievement and ably calibrate the need for private tutoring against the family’s intellectual capital and resources, provide higher level of home support to their children (Long et al, 2014; Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 1997). A study was conducted to investigate why Rural Community Day. Secondary Schools (CDSS) students’ performance in Physical Science examinations is poor at Malawi School.
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