Influence of Teacher Utilisation on Student Academic Achievement in Public Secondary Schools in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of Teacher Utilisation - TU (Teacher Workload - TW, Class Size - CS) on Student Academic Achievement (SAA) in Public Senior Secondary Schools (PSSS) in Southwestern Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design of correlational type. The multi-stage sampling procedure and simple random sampling technique were used to select three (Oyo, Ogun, and Ekiti) States out of the six in Southwestern Nigeria and one Senatorial District (SD) from each State. The proportionate-to-size sampling technique was used to select 40% of the Local Government Areas (LGAs) in each of the SDs, and 50% (101) of the schools in the sampled LGAs. A class of 3,030 PSSS II was used; 202 Mathematics and English Language teachers while 101 school administrators were enumerated. The instruments were TW Questionnaire (?=0.78); CS Inventory (?=0.75); English Language Achievement Test-ELAT (KR-20=7.47) and Mathematics Achievement Test-MAT (KR-20=7.46). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression at a 0.05 level of significance. Respondents’ ages were 46.5±5.20 years (teachers) and 17.60±1.60 years (students). There were 59.0% male teachers and 57.0% female students. The TU was (x =2.0) against the threshold of 2.5. Also, teachers were overutilised (TU: 74.3% had more than 40 students/class and 57.4% taught more than 24 periods/week which is the maximum threshold). Therefore, TU (ß=0.25, t=3.13) made a significant contribution to SAA. Hence, teacher utilisation influenced student academic achievement in public senior secondary schools in Southwestern Nigeria and it should be given attention by all the education stakeholders for improved student academic achievement.