Comparative Performance of Senior Secondary School Agricultural Science Students in Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government Areas of Kaduna State, Nigeria

The study focused on the comparative effect of enrolment, school types, and gender on the achievement of Senior Secondary Agricultural Science students in West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results in Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government Areas of Kaduna State. Twelve public and private schools were randomly but purposefully selected based on location and certification by the West African Senior Secondary Examination Board. Data were subjected to simple descriptive statistics, chi-square and analysis of variance at p ≤ 0.05. Results showed that of the 3663 candidates, 52% comprised 30.1% male and 21.9% female, and 48% made up of 28.5% male, and 19.5% female enrolled in Sabon Gari and Zaria, respectively. The high significant X 2 value of 158.5 between location and school type indicated bias in enrolment. The significance difference (p ≤ 0.05) in school types showed that, although general performance was poor, Sabon Gari out-performed Zaria students with mean grade of 46.59 and 43.36 corresponding to D 7 and E 8 , respectively. However, quality of performance revealed that private schools in Sabon Gari were better (29.05%) than public (19.87%) while public schools in Zaria out-performed (22.04%) private schools (21.75%). Results also showed that gender was not a determinant factor to performance as there was no significant difference in the interaction between male and female students in both locations.