Effect of Street Hawking on the Academic Performance of Students in Practical Agriculture: A Case Study of Secondary Schools in Taraba State.

Abstract

The study determined the impact of street hawking on the academic performance of practical agriculture students in Taraba state. The street child is defined as any child who may have parents or guardians in a locality but living and working in the street. Street children engage in work or employment on a regular basis with the aim of earning a livelihood for themselves or for their families. These children sometimes are absent from school on their parents demand to sell, and sometimes play truancy during practical agricultural science lessons. Their irregular attendance in practical agriculture could affect their performance in the subject. One research question and one hypothesis was formulated for the study. The study employed a survey design, while Taraba State was the area of the study which consists of 16 local government areas and 118 junior secondary schools. The population was made up of 8839 JSSII students as at 2010/2011 school session. The sample size of 384 was drawn using the Taro Yamane formula. A questionnaire for students’ responses and a pre-format sheet for collecting students’ academic performance were instruments used to collect data from the students, and was validated by two experts. The instruments were pilot tested using the split half method. Data collected were analyzed using the mean while z-test was used to test the hypothesis. For research  the question, a mean of 3.5 and above was considered agreed while less than 3.5 were considered disagreed. And for mean academic performance above 3.5 was considered good while below 3.5 was considered as poor. For the null hypothesis, if z-calculated was equal to or more than the table –z at 0.05 level of significance, it was rejected and if the z-calculated was less than the table-z it was accepted. Findings revealed that; (1) the effect of street hawking on student academic performance in practical agriculture was poor. (2) that there was very low rating score of the academic performance in practical agriculture of students that are involved in street hawking. It was recommended that the State government should make basic education free or affordable for the common Nigerian. The State government should legislate against street hawking by school aged children so that they can concentrate on their studies.