Role of Teachers’ Quantity on the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Sequel to a national personnel audit that was recently conducted on public and private education in Nigeria, there has been a growing debate on the immediate need to increase the academic staff strength in all secondary schools in the country. This debate has however taken a controversial trend as a large part of the educational chiefs in the country have stood on an opinion to ordinarily improving the working condition of the existing academic staff since, to them, teachers’ quantity has no direct impact on students’ academic achievement. This paper therefore investigated the role of teachers’ quantity on the academic achievement of secondary school students to determine whether small or excess teachers’ quantity have a direct significant influence on how students perform academically. Using a descriptive survey design, the study sampled 120 teachers from a population of 1,205 in Chikun local government area of Kaduna state, Nigeria. A researcher-designed questionnaire of Likert scale was used for the data collection and descriptive statistical tools of frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviation were used for the data analysis. It was therefore concluded that most schools in the local government are underserved with teachers and that – that had created some sorts of low academic achievement among the secondary school students. Schools do not give a fair share of their revenue to improve staff strength in their schools. Also, schools that are characterized by a low number of teachers are faced by pressure, high workload, and overstress which invariably influence the poor academic achievement of students. Keywords: role, teachers’ quantity, academic achievement, secondary school, students DOI: 10.7176/DCS/13-1-06 Publication date: January 31 st 2023