A Comparative Study of Perfomance of Grade 9 Pupils in the Junior Secondary School Leaving Examinations in selected rural and urban Basic Schools in Senanga District

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to compare the performance between urban and rural Grade 9 school pupils in the Junior Secondary School Leaving Examinations in basic schools in Senanga District.Two objectives guided the study namely, to establish if there was any difference in performance between urban and rural Grade 9 pupils in basic schools in Senanga District and to find out the factors that affected the performance of the Grade 9 pupils in rural and urban basic schools in Senanga District.The sample comprised 140 respondents from urban and rural basic schools, consisting of 100 Grade 9 school pupils, 50 from the urban and 50 rural basic schools, 20 Grade 9 class teachers,10 from the urban and 10 from the rural basic schools, 10 head-teachers, 5 from the urban and 5 from the rural basic schools and 10 PTA chairpersons, 5 from the urban and 5 from the rural basic schools from Senanga District. The study employed mostly the quantitative and, to a lesser extent, the qualitative research designs. The research instruments used were questionnaires, the semi-structured interview and the document analysis. The questionnaires were used to collect data from the pupils, head teachers and the class teachers, while semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the PTA chairpersons Quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) which was used to generate tables of frequencies, percentages and graphs. The findings revealed that the performance of urban and rural Grade 9 school pupils in Junior Secondary School Leaving Examinations was generally poor with no significance difference between the urban and rural Grade 9 school pupils. The poor performance of the Grade 9 pupils was attributed to factors such as lack of qualified teachers, shortage of Grade 9 school teachers, long distance to and from school, lack of homework, insufficient learning materials and lack of library facilities. The study recommended that the Ministry of Education should provide adequate learning and teaching aids for both teachers and pupils in order to reduce the book pupil ratio from 1:4 to 1:1.It further recommended that more qualified teachers be employed to places where their services were required. Furthermore, the government should support teachers to go for further studies to various universities and colleges. The Ministry of Education should improve the conditions of service for teachers in order to motivate them to work efficiently. Finally, the government should provide library facilities at every institution of learning.