Determinants of students' academic performance in private secondary schools in Wakiso district.

Abstract

The study examined the determinant of students’ academic performance in highly performing private secondary schools in Wakiso District, Uganda. The study objectives were; to establish student characteristics that influence academic performance; to establish teacher characteristics that influence academic performance and to establish school characteristics that influence academic performance in highly performing private secondary schools in Wakiso District, Uganda. The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional and correlational design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods to data collection with a sample size of 384 derived using Morgan and Krejcie (1970) from a target population of 590 students from classes of senior 2, 4 and 6 in selected secondary schools in Wakiso district. Data collected was exported to SPSS version 20 for editing, coding to facilitate informative and relevant computation. The objectives of the study were analyzed using the Probit Model. The independent variables that included student, teacher and school characteristics were statistically significant in explaining the dependent variable, students’ academic performance for instance Class attendance (0.011), Peer influence (0.003), Parent’s visit (0.009), Students’ health status (0.004) and Teacher attendance (0.013); teacher characteristic variable such as Teachers’ disciplinary actions (0.018), Teachers’ qualifications (0.004), Teachers daily attendance (0.002), School administration (0.009) and school characteristics variables such as School library (0.001), Time table (0.000), School rules (0.017) and Sanitation (0.019) were all significant at 5% (0.05) levels of significance. The study concluded that student, teacher and school characteristics are paramount factors explaining students’ academic performance. From the study, its recommended that students traits need to studied, teachers need to be motivated while schools need to reexamine their operation efficiency so as to contribute towards improved academic performances by the students.