ABSTRACT
Academic performance is at the centre of educational enterprise as the effort of almost all stakeholders is targeted at improving academic performance. Achievement is a potent and significant index of academic performance as it determines the extent to which learners have achieved the body of instruction or knowledge passed across to them by the teacher through structured knowledge and instruction. Various factors can be adduced for high or low achievement and these factors can be effectively categorized into learner based, home based, teacher based and school based factors. Poor academic performance due to low level of achievement has been a major headache to government and other stakeholders in the education sector. This study was designed to examine the influence of school
The descriptive survey research design was employed in the study and data was collected using a self developed and validated questionnaire. A multi stage sampling technique was employed to select 360 student respondents and 18 teacher respondents. An achievement test in Government was designed to measure the achievement of students in Government. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and simple percentages and inferential statistic of linear and multiple regressions. Findings of the study that teacher factors (teachers’ job stress level, job attitude, qualification , experience and mastery of subject matter) and school factors (classroom size, availability of teaching and learning materials and school location) had significant influence on the achievement of students in Government. Further investigation revealed that teacher mastery of subject matter had the largest contributory teacher based effect while classroom size had the largest influence on the achievement of learners.
It was recommended that schools be properly planted and that government should stop playing lip service to educational development but fund education adequately to mitigate the impact of all the modifiable factors revealed by the study to influence achievement.