EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF STUDENTS IN PUBLIC JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN KOGI STATE

Abstract

The study examined educational support services and students’ academic achievement in public Junior Secondary Schools in Kogi State. In carrying out this study, Eight (8) research questions were raised and six (6) hypotheses were formulated and tested. The correlational research design was adopted in this study. The population of the study was seventeen thousand eight hundred and forty-five (17,845) junior secondary school three (JSS3) students in the 296 public junior secondary schools in the twenty-one (21) Local Government Areas of Kogi State. A sample of 820 Junior Secondary School three (JSS3) students representing approximately 4 percent of the population was drawn for the study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select two Junior Secondary Schools from each of the local government areas and but only one public JSS schoolwas drawn in Okehi Local Government Area. This gives a total of 41 schools (2 schools x 20 local government areas plus one school from Okehi Local Government Area since it has only one public JSS school). The data for this study was collected through two instruments. The instruments-ESUSEC and SAAB was not be subjected to any validity. Research questions 1 and 2 were answered using mean ( ) and standard deviation (SD). Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were tested with Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC) Statistics while the Multiple Linear Regression Analysis (MLRA) was used to test hypothesis 6. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that, educational support services  significantly predicted students’ academic achievement in public junior secondary schools in Kogi State. Also the level of educational support services availability in public junior secondary schools in Kogi State was low. Furthermore, the level of students’ academic achievement in public junior secondary schools in Kogi State was high. This indicated that students’ academic achievement can be attributed to school library service, health/medical care service, sports/recreational facilities and IT hardware/software laboratory and guidance and counseling. It was recommended that the government should provide school library services at the junior secondary schools for the promotion of students’ academic achievement through the creation of study resources, study support spaces and study friendly environment in the school for students.