IMPACT OF CONTINUOUS ASSESMENT ON MATHEMATICS PERFORMANCE OF JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS, IN POLICE SECONDARY SCHOOL, MINNA, NIGER STATE.

Abstract

This study was carried out to determine the impact of continuous assessment on academic performance of junior secondary school students in Police Secondary School Minna, Niger State. The study goes a long way to also test to see the gender difference in mathematics performance of the junior students of the school. The research design was an experimental design in which the students were divided into two groups namely; E1 and E2. In E1 group the treatment administered was two sets of C.A during the period of study (term). Also, E2 group was administered four sets of tests in same manner under same conditions. It would be noted that before the treatment a pre test was carried out, after which the treatment (post test) was implemented. The school used in this research has a population of one thousand junior secondary students, a sample size of 120 students using a simple random sampling which completes 12% of the entire population selected for this study recommended by Smith and Scott (2013) that at least 10% of the entire populace should be used for a sample space. The instrument used to administer the treatment was the ‘Teacher Made Test’ (TMT).Four hypotheses were raised and tested in this study, where the independent t-test and PPMC (Pearson Product Moment Correlation) served as tools for analyzing and testing the stated hypothesis. The researcher in the course of the study was able to discover these findings among others; The experimental group exposed to four sets of Continuous Assessment performed significantly better than those exposed to two sets of Continuous Assessment. The experimental group (E1) exposed to two sets of C.A had little or no significant differences in the performance of the male and female students. Thus it is recommended that; Students performed better in Mathematics when they are exposed to series of C.A's (i.e. 4) before the final examination. Mathematics teachers should therefore strive to see that students are exposed to many C.A's before the final examination. This will go in a long way to increase their performance. The results of this study shows that few C.A is gender friendly. With many C.A's, male students performed better than female students. Therefore, the teachers should encourage both sex (male and female) to participate equally in the learning and assessment process in Mathematics.