Teaching and Learning Resources as Determinants of Students Academic Performance in Secondary Agriculture, in Rachuonyo North Sub County, Kenya

Abstract

In the last decade, performance of students in Rachuonyo North Sub County has taken a downward trend in the national examination, Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE).This downward trend is particularly seen in the agriculture subject. This could be as a result of many interacting factors that may cause the poor performance of students in Rachuonyo, and therefore, availability of laboratory, classrooms, school farm, farm structures, textbooks and library being among the factors. In this study, these factors were referred to as teaching and learning resources. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of availability of teaching and learning resources on the students’ academic performance in agriculture subject. Co-relational design was used during the study and stratified sampling was used to select schools for the study. The target population was 754 students taking agriculture subject at Form Four. Stratified random sampling was used to select the sample for the study. The sample size was 254 students registered in agriculture subject. The items of the questionnaire were developed based on the objectives of the study and the items were discussed with other experts and then pilot tested to ascertain their reliability. The reliability coefficient was 0.72. The instrument was self-administered. Data was analyzed using quantitative methods where descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means, as well as, standard deviation were used, while inferential statistics included Pearson correlation and simple regression were used to test the hypothesis, with levels of significance set at 0.05. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software was used for data analysis.The study observed that majority of the schools had laboratories, classrooms, school farms, libraries and adequate text books for agriculture; however, many schools did not have farm structures. In addition, the study found that schools without laboratories, school farms and farm structures had a higher mean score as compared to schools having these facilities. Similarly, schools with adequate classrooms, textbooks and libraries had higher mean scores as compared to schools without these facilities. However, tests for statistical significance concluded that performance in secondary school agriculture was not significantly determined by the availability of teaching and learning resources in Rachuonyo North Sub County.