Performance of primary four pupils in literacy test in a multicultural and multilingual country: a study in school effectiveness

Abstract

Nigeria, been a multicultural and multilingual country has 250 to 400 or more recognised ethnic groups, English Language is, therefore, adopted as the official language. It is pertinent to find out how Nigerian children perform in the subject because performance in school subjects is one of the measures of school effectiveness. The study was carried out in 28 schools from each state and 14 from Abuja (FCT) totalling an expected 1,036 schools. From the sampled schools, 30 pupils each were randomly selected. In all, 20,664 primary 4 pupils participated in the study. The learning achievement test (literacy) used in this study as the only instrument was curriculum referenced. The items in literacy test were generated on the basis of a table of specification covering different content areas of specific subjects and three levels of cognitive operations namely; Knowledge, Understanding, and Application based on Bloom's hierarchies of cognitive operation. The following were the findings of this study: the pupils made an overall mean score of 29.41%. This performance is considered very low as is below the benchmark of 50% which is considered as the pass mark at primary school level in Nigeria. Pupils from South West performed best followed by those from North East and pupils from the North East performed worse. The implications of the study are discussed.