Role of Teachers’ Quantity on the Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Sequel to a national personnel audit that was recently conducted on public and private
education in Nigeria, there has been a growing debate on the immediate need to increase the
academic staff strength in all secondary schools in the country. This debate has however
taken a controversial trend as a large part of the educational chiefs in the country have stood
on an opinion to ordinarily improving the working condition of the existing academic staff
since, to them, teachers’ quantity has no direct impact on students’ academic achievement.
This paper therefore investigated the role of teachers’ quantity on the academic achievement
of secondary school students to determine whether small or excess teachers’ quantity have a
direct significant influence on how students perform academically. Using a descriptive survey
design, the study sampled 120 teachers from a population of 1,205 in Chikun local
government area of Kaduna state, Nigeria. A researcher-designed questionnaire of Likert
scale was used for the data collection and descriptive statistical tools of frequency counts,
percentages, mean and standard deviation were used for the data analysis. It was therefore
concluded that most schools in the local government are underserved with teachers and that
– that had created some sorts of low academic achievement among the secondary school
students. Schools do not give a fair share of their revenue to improve staff strength in their
schools. Also, schools that are characterized by a low number of teachers are faced by
pressure, high workload, and overstress which invariably influence the poor academic
achievement of students.