The extent to which success in the Junior Secondary Certificate Examinations (JSC) in English and Mathematics predict success in these subjects in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE)

Abstract

Abstract provided by author:

The population for the study was composed of male and female learners from 21 Senior Secondary Schools from all educational regions in Namibia. The same individual learners who had completed the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) were traced for their Junior Secondary Certificate results in both Mathematics and English. Therefore, the final sample under study has 1 076 learners altogether. This sample included 271 and 875 learners from urban and rural areas respectively. The sex distribution was, 546 males and 530 females. The ages of the selected learners ranged between fifteen and twenty nine years. To analyse the data the SPSS programme was used. The following statistics were used to analyse the data, namely, frequencies; t-test; crosstabulations; Pearson-Product-Moment-Correlation-Coefficient (r). Correlations were carried out to determine the relationship between JSC English and Mathematics scores and the IGCSE scores in these subjects. Crosstabulations were carried out for each of the subsamples, namely, by sex, age and school location. All correlations were found to be statistically significant at the p 0. 001 level of significance

The principal findings are as follows:In both English and Mathematics examinations the candidates scored higher grades at the Junior Secondary Certificate examination than in the IGCSE examination

Overall there is a high correlation between both the JSC English and Mathematics examinations and the IGCSE English and Mathematics examination

The t-test indicated that overall there is a significant difference between the JSC English and Mathematics and IGCSE English and Mathematics scores

The t-test for both JSC English and Mathematics scores and IGCSE English and Mathematics indicated that there is no significant difference in performance between male and female learners

The mean scores as well as the t-test results showed that the younger age group, namely 15 to 17 years (at the time of writing IGCSE), performed better than the age groups 18 to 20 and 21 to 29 years. There is thus a significant difference in performance between the different age groups

The urban learners performed better than the rural learners in both JSC and IGCSE English and Mathematics examinations. The t-test showed that there was a significant difference in performance in favour of urban learners