In civilized and developed countries, schooling resources which cost money, including class size reduction, higher teacher salaries, modern school buildings and equipment, are positively associated with student outcomes. Although money alone may not be the only solution, the more equitable and adequate allocation of financial inputs to schooling do provide opportunities for improving the equity and adequacy of outcomes. This notion was confirmed by Wenglinsky (1997), when he stated among other reasons, that economic resources that are spent judiciously are always associated with academic achievement. He further added that per-pupil expenditures on both instruction and administration of the school are positively related to class size, which in turn relates to student achievement.
In Nigeria, despite the fact that the government has clearly confirmed the importance of mathematics by making it a core and compulsory subject at both junior and senior secondary levels (Federal Republic of Nigeria [FRN], 2004), the invested billions of Naira in the teaching and learning of mathematics has not yielded any significant improvement due to wasteful and inadequate spending of the required resources. Numerous factors were identified by some researchers for the inconsequential performance by students, some of which included: shortage of qualified mathematics teachers, poor facilities, equipment and instructional materials for effective teaching (Odogwu, 1994; Yemi & Adeshina, 2013), and large pupil-to-teacher ratios (Alele-Williams, 1988). Another major hindrance to better improvement of government spending, is the continued use of traditional chalk and talk methods which are yet to give way to the multimedia teaching methods presently in use in schools in developing nations.
Students’ performance in mathematics at both internal and external examinations has remained considerably poor (Ale, 1989). To buttress this fact, The Sun News reported that Nigeria recorded its worst results in mathematics in the last three years. According to The Sun News (“Outrage trails students’ poor performance,” 2014), out of 1.6 million students that took the 2014 May/June West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), only a little more than half a million (31.28%) passed with the minimum requirement for admission into tertiary institutions. Based on such facts, the purpose of this study is to explore the various external factors affecting high school mathematics performance in Lagos, Nigeria.
Mathematics teachers had on several accounts been judged as the main determinant in the success or failure of students in the subject. This is true for many reasons; according to Idowu (2015), “they are the main custodians of students, the way and manner they perform this role is important” (p. 4). Because of this, mathematics teachers are expected to have the required knowledge necessary for teaching as well as the ablility to disseminate such knowledge appropriately that will result in learning. Mathematics teachers, according to Soer (2009), should be able to communicate the required knowledge in a clear, informative and precise manner to their students. This, unfortunately, according to Okafor and Anaduaka (2013), is not being done by the mathematics teachers. According to both researchers, most teachers are not ready to go the extra length in their teaching.
In a study conducted by Avong (2013), shortage of qualified mathematics was judged to be the most contributing factor to poor performance by her participants in a study conducted in a remote in Kaduna state. Teachers’ attitudes had also been linked to students’ poor performance in a study conducted by Osunde and Izevbigie (2006). In this study, 400 Nigerian post primary school teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching profession were sorted. They discovered that issues like delay in payment of salaries and poor financial remuneration contributed to a low attitude of teachers in the teaching profession.
The school population, according to Korau (2006), today, is in the thousands compared to mere hundreds many years ago. Consequently, schools are now overcrowded with some classrooms having too large a size that may seriously compromise mathematics teaching and learning. A student-teacher ratio of 40:1 may be considered adequate, but according to Umameh (2011) some schools in Nigeria are noted to have a 100:1 ratio, a situation that will never lead to any meaningful learning of mathematics no matter how capable the mathematics teacher may be. According to Asikhai (2010), the government recommendation for student-teacher ratio was 50:1, but it is obvious that this ratio can never be met with the astronomical increase in population experiencing currently.
Also, another issue raised that equally affect students’ performance is the distance from most students’ homes to their schools. This adversely affects not just fatigue, but sometimes absenteeism, which, according to Duze (2005), could lead to truancy and eventual dropout by some students. Evidence from research has also showed that long distances travelled to school are among the major reasons why students performed poorly and eventually dropped out of schools (Arubayi, 2005; Onakpoma, 2008).
Rationale
The frequent drop in the performance of students in mathematics in Nigeria, as reported by The Sun News (“Outrage trails students’ poor performance,” 2014), where only 31.28% of the 1.6 million students that took the 2014 May/June WASSCE passed with the minimum requirement for admission into tertiary institutions informed the rationale for this study. This sad pronouncement has triggered various reactions as to what could be the reason behind the drop in performance in the Lagos state, Nigeria
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the various roles played by the external factors in the current position and offer solutions that will lead to improvement in mathematics in Lagos state, Nigeria. In so doing, a self-reported performance of high school students from Lagos state, Nigeria was collected.
