Victor Ofugocho OCHOCHE and Benjamin Akoji OGUCHE
Department of Mathematics Education, Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, Nigeria
Abstract
This study was carried out a comparative assessment of academic performance in Mathematics in urban and rural Junior Secondary Schools in Apa Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. The study uses a quasi-experimental design and the population of the study comprised 943 JSS 3 students in Apa L.G.A. of Benue State, Nigeria. Five (5) specific objectives, five (5) research questions and five null hypotheses were stated to guide the study. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research question while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. The sample size of the study was two hundred (200) students drawn using simple random sampling and a Mathematics Performance Test (MPT) was used as the instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by two Mathematic Education experts, one expert test and measurement and two mathematics teachers and Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) method was used to ensure the reliability of the instrument, yielding 0.85 for the entire test item, indicating a high level of internal consistency of the instrument. Based on the data collected and analyzed, the results obtained revealed that students in urban schools perform better in mathematics than students in rural schools. Also, the study revealed that female students in both urban and rural schools perform better than their male counterparts in mathematics. The poor performance of rural students could be attributed to unavailability of school facilitates, poor funding, poor quality of teachers, low access to reading materials in schools, poor medical care, inadequate teaching materials, parents low socio-economic status, poor infrastructure and lacking quality instructional material and if some of the factors can be put to check it will help improves the performance of students in rural schools. The study recommends that the government and other educational agencies should put all these factors leading to the poor performance of student in rural schools into due consideration so as to help improve rural students’ academic performance in mathematics and also supervise teachers in rural schools regularly to ensure the they are carrying out their duties properly.
Keywords: Mathematics, Mathematics Education, Comparative Assessment, Urban Schools, Rural Schools, Apa, Basic Education
How to Cite this Article:
Ochoche, V. O. & Oguche, B. A. (2022). Comparative Assessment of Academic Performance in Mathematics in Urban and Rural Junior Secondary Schools in Apa Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. VillageMath Educational Review (VER), 3(1), 1-25. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5816896
