Smuggling Activities and School Environment as Correlates of Students’ Learning Outcomes in Economics

Abstract

Smuggling activities across borders by individuals who want to evade the payment of customs duties and tax is not a new trend, but the involvement of secondary school students whose schools are sited in border towns is novel. Thus, the study sought to investigate the correlation between smuggling activities and the school environment on learning outcomes in Economic concepts in secondary schools. The study is underpinned by the Rational Choice Theory within the positivism paradigm. The study was designed using descriptive survey research. A sample size of 320 respondents was obtained through the use of stratified random sampling. Two (2) self-developed instruments were used to collect data; students’ questionnaire on smuggling activities (SQOSA) and an economics achievement test (EAT). Pearson’s correlation conducted on the data collected from the respondents and multiple regression analysis utilizing the step-wise method indicated that the best of the predictors were smuggling of fairly used clothes, fairly used tyres and small firearms accounted for the poor performance in economics concepts at the p < .05 level. The study which is hinged on the rational choice theory concludes that the participation of students in secondary schools in smuggling activities is a result of proximity to border towns which affects their academic performance in economics concepts, hence, the study recommends that schools in future should not be located near border posts, while the ones presently close to the border be upgraded into full boarding schools with a high-security network to prevent the students from participating in smuggling activities.