Teacher Competence and Students’ Academic Achievement in Public Senior Secondary Schools of the FCT, Abuja

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to examine the relationship between teacher competency and academic
achievement of public senior secondary school students of the FCT, Abuja. Two research questions, two
objectives, and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey
research design. The target population comprised of 51,890 SS2 students in public senior secondary
schools in the FCT, Abuja. A sample of 380 students were selected using Krejcie and Morgan table for
selecting sample size. Data was collected using a self-developed questionnaires tagged Teacher
Competency Questionnaire (TECOQ). In addition, Mathematics Achievement Test and well English
Language Achievement Test were developed for the study for the purpose assessing students’ academic
achievement. To ensure validity of the instrument used, they were given to two experts in educational
research and measurement and evaluation for face and content validity. The experts subjected them to
critical appraisal. Scores from the appraisal of experts were used to obtain consensus logical validity
indices of 0.80, 0.77 and 0.72 respectively. The instruments were pilot tested on 30 students; the
respondents were part of the population but not part of the sample for this study. Even though the
instruments were standardized, they were still subjected to reliability in order to ascertain their degree of
consistency. The data obtained from the pilot test was used to compute the internal consistency of the
instrument using Cronbach’s Alpha reliability method. The analyses of the responses yielded reliability
indices of 0.75, 0.73 and 0.71. Calculated r-values of Pearson’s product moment correlation was used to answer the research questions developed for the study while the p-values (probability) of Pearson’s product
moment correlation was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study
revealed that: there is a significant relationship between teacher communication skills and academic
achievement in public senior secondary school of the FCT, Abuja and there is a significant relationship
between teacher classroom management skills and academic achievement in public senior secondary
school of the FCT, Abuja. Based on the findings, recommendations were made which among others
include: conducting workshops and seminars in schools in order to help teachers improve their
communication skills and encouraging teachers to embark on in-service training for the purpose of ensuring
they update and improve their knowledge and experience of classroom management.