ABSTRACT

The study examined “Teaching and Learning Conditions in Public, Private and Faith-based Secondary Schools in Abia State, Nigeria. The design adopted for the study was Questionnaire-descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Seven research questions were asked and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 significant level. Literature was reviewed based on the variables related to the objectives of the study. The population of the study was 11,376 made up of 697 principals and 10,679 teachers in 697 secondary schools of the three categories of ownership public, private and faith-based from 70 school in Abia State. The number of schools sampled was 70. Simple random sampling technique by balloting was used to select 23 public schools, 25 private schools and 22 faith-based schools used. The sample size of the respondents was 968, (291 teachers from the public schools, 318 from the private schools and 359 teachers) from the faith based schools). The instrument used for data collection was a researcher-structured questionnaire titled Secondary School Teaching and Learning Conditions Questionnaire (SSTLQ) built on a 4-point rating scale. The instrument was validated by three experts one from Measurement and Evaluation and two from Educational Management from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The instrument was carried out to determine the measure of stability of the instrument and the measure of internal consistency. The measure of stability of the School Teaching and Learning Conditions Questionnaire (SSTLQ) was 0.82, as the stability of the five sub-scales had reliability indices that ranged from 0.71-0.74 which were reliable. The internal consistency was established using the cronbach alpha method which yielded an internal consistency of 0.84 for the Senior Secondary Teaching and Learning Condition Questionnaire (SSTLQ), as the internal consistency of the sub-scales of the Senior Secondary Teaching and Learning Condition Questionnaire (SSTLQ) ranged from 0.74-0.78 which implied that the instrument was reliable.  The data generated were computed using descriptive statistics involving the computation of frequency counts, mean and pooled mean to answer the six research questions while the two way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that Teaching and Learning Conditions differ in public, private and faith-based secondary schools in the aspect of teacher-factors, student-factors, learners friendly environment, management practices, building facilities and teachers condition of service. Based on the findings, recommendations were made, which includes that secondary schools in Abia State should not overlook the condition of service of teachers that will facilitate their teaching conditions, to avoid poor teaching effectiveness of teachers in the three school types, public, private and faith-based.