Abstract:

This study was descriptive survey study carried out in Southern Cross River State, Nigeria. The study has aimed at finding out factors that influence educational wastages among senior secondary school science students in Cross River State. Three hundred science teachers were randomly selected from secondary schools in the study area. The instrument for data collection was the Determinants of Educational Wastages in Secondary Schools Questionnaire (DEWSSQ). The instrument had a construct validity of 0.76 using Cronbach Alpha. The instrument was administered on the respondents and the data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and chi-square. The mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the chi-square was used to test the hypotheses. The results of the study showed that economic-related factors, government-related factors, school-related factors, home-related factors and gender-related factors were found to have accounted for educational wastages. All the hypotheses were rejected at 0.05 level of significance because in all the cases, the calculated chi-square were higher than the critical value. The paper thus recommended among others the recruitment of qualified science teachers into the school system, adoption of innovative teaching methods in the classroom and the provision of instructional materials in the secondary schools.