COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE PERFORMANCE OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS STUDENTS

ABSTRACT: This study was carried out on the comparative analysis of the academic performance of private and public secondary school students using Ikeja local government area, Lagos state as case study. To achieve this, three(3) research questions were formulated. The survey design was adopted and the simple random sampling techniques were employed in this study. The population size comprise of students of the five(5) selected secondary schools in Ikeja local government area, Lagos state. In determining the sample size, the researcher conveniently selected 229 respondents while 215 were received and 210 were validated. Self-constructed and validated questionnaire was used for data collection. The collected and validated questionnaires were analyzed using frequency and percentage tables, as well as mean and standard deviation tables. While the hypothesis was tested using Pearson correlation statistical tool, SPSS v23. The result of the findings reveals that the there is high  level of student’s failure in public secondary schools than  private secondary school. The findings also revealed that the factors that influence the performance of secondary school students in public and private school include; poor' learning skills, parental background, peer influence, lack of qualified teacher', and poor availability of learning infrastructure. And there is a significant relationship between school environment and the academic performance of both private and public schools student. In regard to the findings, the study recommends that the state government should provide teachers opportunities to attend seminars, service courses and workshops to avail them the opportunity of keeping abreast with effective and current methods of teaching  to facilitate   teaching in schools.