Abstract

The study investigated school characteristics on students’ academic performance in Chemistry secondary schools in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State. The descriptive survey design was used in the study. The population of the study covered 3,241 Senior Secondary School (SSS) one and two students in the 16 public secondary schools in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State. The simple random sampling technique was adopted to select 20 Senior Secondary School Students from each of the 16 schools given a total of 320. Student’s raw scores collected from their respective schools with the academic performance proforma were not subjected to any validity procedure because the results are standardized, objective and verifiable. The data on students’ academic performance were also not subjected to any reliability technique because the raw scores collected with the proforma are presumed to be standardized achievement scores. The t-test statistics for two independent sample means was used to test hypotheses 1, 2 and 3. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version, 20.0) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that the academic performance of secondary school students in Chemistry differed by school ownership, school location and type in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State. It was recommended that principals of private schools should endeavor to monitor instructions of teachers on various subjects in other to ensure the performance of their students matches that of students in public schools