SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT AS CORRELATE OF TRUANCY BEHAVIOUR AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN JIGAWA STATE, NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELING

Safyanu Shu’aibu Sara & Mohammad Mahmoud Baba

Department of Educational Foundations

Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi

Email: ssara068@yahoo.com & mmahmoudbaba@gmail.com

Abstract: The study investigated the school as correlate of persistent truancy behaviour among students of Jigawa State Secondary Schools. The objective of the study was to determine the extent of truancy among the students. It was also to discover the types of school environment, leadership styles among the principals and the adequacy of curricular offerings and their relationship with the students’ truancy behaviour. The design was a correlational study whose population consisted of all the truant students of Jigawa State secondary schools who were estimated to be 4664 in number, their teachers and the principals. Out of the total population 200 truants and 60 teachers (class masters of the six most truanting class in each school) were purposely selected through simple random sampling technique from the ten surveyed schools. The Principals of the ten selected schools were automatically included in the study .Thus the sample size of the consisted of 270 respondents. A researcher constructed questionnaire tagged: School Related Factors and Truancy Assessment Questionnaire (SRFTAQ) which was designed and developed by the researchers was used for data collection. Four research questions were raised and answered, three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Frequency counts and percentages were used to answer the research questions, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient and were used to test the three hypotheses formulated at 0.05 level of significance. The result from the research questions showed that the rate of truancy is high among Jigawa State secondary school students. It was also revealed that the types of leadership styles available  are democratic, authoritarian and laissez faire .It was also considered that curricular offerings is not adequate in the schools. From the hypotheses the result shows that significant relationship exists between the three schools related factors and truancy behaviour by the students. Among the recommendations offered were that authorities should work on the school environment so that it can provide good atmosphere for teaching and learning. There should also be some form of flexibility in the curriculum and its implementation.