Enhancing Students' Academic Performance in Secondary Schools: The Vicissitude of Classroom Management Skills

Abstract

This study examined classroom management with focus on class control as well as classroom discipline in correlation with academic performance of secondary schools' students in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design of survey type. The population of the study comprised all the 87, 336 secondary school students and 7,538 teachers in 203 secondary schools in Ekiti State. The sample for this study consisted 720 students selected from 24 public secondary schools using multi-stage sampling procedure which involved simple random, stratified and purposive sampling techniques. Two set of instruments tagged "Classroom Management Questionnaire (CMQ)” and an Inventory on Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination results were used for the study. The face and content validity of CMQ was done and the test-retest method of reliability was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument and reliability co-efficient of 0.81 was obtained for CMQ. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used and all hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that the levels of classroom management and students' academic performance in secondary schools in Ekiti State were moderate. The findings also showed that there was significant relationship between classroom management and students' academic performance. It was found out that class control and classroom discipline were positively related to students' academic performance. It was recommended that routine inspection of teachers for effective teaching and learning should be encouraged while teachers in secondary schools should adopt appropriate class control measures in order to enhance better students' academic performance.