School-Based Violence amongst Students in Private and Public Boarding Secondary Schools in Bayelsa State

Abstract

The study compared school-based violence amongst students in private and public boarding secondary schools in Bayelsa State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Two research questions and corresponding hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study was all students in the 21 boarding secondary schools (10 public and 11 private) in Bayelsa state. The instrument for data collection was a “School-based Violence in Boarding Schools Questionnaire” (SVBSQ) which was developed by the researchers and validated by experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha formula and a coefficient of 0.75 was obtained which was considered appropriate for the study. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using Z-test statistic at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that bullying, verbal abuse, corporal punishment, forceful collection of property, sexual violence, general beating and washing of toilets, sweeping the hostel are major forms of school-based violence displayed by students while killing and sexual violence are minor forms of school-based violence displaced by students in private and public boarding secondary schools and that there is no significant difference in the mean responses of students in private and public boarding schools in Bayelsa state . It was recommended amongst others that the school system should employ the services of matrons/warders/boarding house officers, to reduce violence and school management should be encouraged to implement the strategies for controlling students’ aggression in secondary schools in Bayelsa state.