Influence Of Selected Factors On Academic Performance Of Students In Secondary School Agriculture, In Rachuonyo North District, Kenya

Agriculture is the backbone to Kenya’s economy. This fact justifies the need to integrate agriculture in the school curriculum, in order to equip the learners with problem- solving skills for self-sufficiency. Low performance of students in agriculture subject has become an issue in Rachuonyo North District, and therefore, factors influencing performance of the students needed to be understood, in order to seek practical ways of supporting the students to improve in their performance in the subject. The purpose of this study was therefore, to determine the influence of selected factors on academic performance of students in secondary school agriculture, in Rachuonyo North District. The study adopted a theoretical model of McClelland’s Achievement Motivation Theory. The selected design for the study was co-relational design and stratified sampling was used to select schools for the study. The target population included 38 agriculture teachers and 9059 students. The sample size was 254 Form Four agriculture students and 30 agriculture teachers. The instrument was validated through pilot testing for comprehension and clarity while reliability of the instrument was tested using split-half method. Data was collected using two questionnaires, namely, for students and agriculture teachers, as respondents. Data was analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods where descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means, as well as, standard deviation were used, while inferential statistics included Pearson Correlation, Spearman’s Rho, t-test, as well as, simple and multiple regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses, with levels of significance set at 0.05. Statistical Package for Social Sciences software was used for data analysis. The study found that availability of teaching and learning resources considered was not statistically significant as linear regression results yielded 0.123 which was higher than 0.05. Similarly, the study found that teachers’ experience had a t-value of 3.172 which was greater than 1.96 with a significance of 0.04, which was statistically significant. Thus the second hypothesis was rejected.