Family Socio-Economic Status in Relation to Free Education Programme: The Implication on Student’s Academic Achievement in Public Secondary Schools in South-West Nigeria (Published)
The study investigated the impact of socio-economic status of parent and government free education programme on student’s academic achievement in public secondary schools in south-west Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey and Ex-post facto research design. The targeted sample for this study was 300 respondents. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. In all, 288 Students, and 12 Principals were carefully selected to make a total of 300 respondents out of the population. Two sets of instruments were used to collect data for this study; the instruments which were self-designed and self-administered on the respondents by the researcher with a reliability coefficient of 0.879 and 0.78 for (FSSFEAQ) and SAP respectively. The general questions raised were answered using descriptive statistics involving frequency counts, percentages, mean deviation and chart while the postulated hypotheses were tested using inferential statistics involving Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Chi-Square test at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that there was no significant difference between the levels of sponsorship available to public school students in south west states. The study all revealed that there was a significant difference between socio-economic status among the south-west states. It was revealed that there was no significant association between socio-economic status and student’s academic achievement in public secondary school in south west. Based on the findings, it was recommended that Government should increase budgetary allocation for education to improve sponsorship of public secondary schools education and also encourage individual Philanthropist and Non-government organization to render more support to education in order to boost the students’ academic achievement.
Keywords: Academic Achievement, Free Education, Socio-Economic Status, family
Assessing Free Education of Public Secondary Schools for Sustainable National Development in Nigeria (Published)
Education is inevitable tool for sustainable development and economic development is the desire of all nations of the world but how to attain a sustainable development remains a challenge to many nations. This paper examined free education and its adaption for sustainable national development in Nigeria. Education is a social service, which is meant to eradicate illiteracy, ensures comfortable living of the citizens as well as the development of the country, it should be provided free for all. In the course of this paper, information and data were gathered from literature and forty two (42) principals spread across forty two secondary schools in the four (4) Local Government Area of Umuahia Education Zone to describe the Concept and support of the arguments raised. The data for the study were collected using an instrument titled “Assessing Free Education for Sustainable Development Questionnaire (AFESDQ). The instrument was validated by three (3) research experts and reliability established using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient with reliability 0.83. Data obtained were analyzed using mean for the research questions while hypothesis formulated was tested at 0.5 level of significance. The relationship between free education and sustainable development were established, the extent of enhancement and factors that facilitate free education were also examined with suggestions including among others, the need to ensure equity and egalitarianism, combat the looming poverty, low manpower/ literacy level and provision of scholarships, bursaries to students and adequate funding from government.
Keywords: Free Education, National Development, Nigeria, Public Secondary Schools