| dc.description.abstract | Students' academic achievement is one of the indicators of quality education. This
study aimed to establish the determinants of students' academic achievements in
public secondary schools in Machakos County. Establishing whether students' entry
behaviour, the learning environment, the student's teacher ratio, and the teacher's
years of experience play an essential role in students' academic achievements. The
researcher adopted a descriptive survey research design, and the target population for
the study was 369 principals, 4,267 teachers, and 115,132 students. The researcher
used purposive and stratified sampling techniques to extract the actual sample size for
the study. The sample size was 37 principals, 390 teachers, and 397 students. The
researcher used questionnaires to collect data from the teachers, students, and
principals. The reliability of the research tools was determined using the test-retest
method. Supervisors appraised the validity of the instruments to ascertain and clarify
that the test instruments would measure what they were intended to measure. The
researcher analyzed Qualitative data by organizing them thematically according to the
objectives and labelled the themes for distinction. Quantitative data was analyzed with
the help of Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 28, applying
descriptive statistics of mean, mode, standard deviation, frequency tally, and
percentages from the research findings. The researcher used inferential statistics of
ANOVA and made inferences from the analysis. Results showed that; there is no
statistically significant relationship between students' entry-level and academic
achievement (p = .863). There is a statistically significant relationship between the
learning environment and student’s academic achievement (p = .000). There is no
statistically significant relationship between the student-teacher ratio and students'
academic achievement (p = .597). There is a statistically significant relationship
between teacher experience and students' performance (p = .000). The study
recommends that; the principals collaborate with other stakeholders to ensure a
conducive learning environment for effective learning. Moreover, the government
should provide the necessary learning resources and ensure that secondary schools'
infrastructure is well-equipped. In conjunction with TSC, the ministry of education
should improve the frequency of organizing workshops/seminars and in-service
training for teachers. | en_US |
