Perceived Influencers of the Decline on Performance of Students in Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education's Agriculture Examination Results.

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors perceived to contribute to the decline of students' performance in the Botswana's General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) agriculture results. Ninety-one agriculture examiners were randomly sampled out of 100 teachers who were invited to mark the 2012 end of year examination scripts. A questionnaire was mailed by post and partly hand delivered to gather quantitative data. The SPSS software was used for statistical analysis. The results showed that majority (57%) of the agriculture teacher examiners were male, 66% were in the age range of 31-35 years old. A large proportion (66%) of them had taught for a period of 6 to 15 years. The study revealed positive perceptions of teachers on three constructs influencing the decline on the students' performance in agriculture. The study revealed that under the construct, Students' behaviors, social and economic related factors, "students attitudes towards the subject" yielded high mean (x-bar)'=4.45, STD (s)' = 0.81; "on Factors related to curriculum issues," the study showed "interpretation of examination items" had high mean (x-bar)'= 4.39, STD (s) = 0.75 and under the construct on "Factors related to resources and infrastructure" the mean (x-bar) was = 4.79, STD (s) = 0.53 was high on the "student teacher ratio." The study concluded that the three constructs studied had influence towards students' performance in agriculture. However, based on interpretational correlations the results did not find any strong relationship among the demographic variables studied.