The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gender, self concept, socio economic status of parents and type of school on academic achievement of students in biology in the Calabar municipality. 280 Senior Secondary School II (SSS II) students offering biology in their various schools were randomly selected from ten out, of the fifteen schools in the Calabar municipality. Six out of the ten schools were coeducational schools, two were boy’s schools and the other two were girl’s schools. Eight research questions were formulated to guide the study. The following hypotheses were tested: 1. There is no significant difference in the academic achievement of biology between male students and female students. 2. There is no significant relationship between students’ academic achievement in biology and students’ self concept. 3. There is no significant difference in the academic achievement in biology of students in co-educational schools and those in single sex schools. 4. There is no significant difference in the academic achievement in biology between students from high socio-economic background and those from low socioeconomic background. 5. There is no significant difference between the general academic achievement of male students and that of female students. 6. There is no significant relationship between students’ general academic achievement and self concept. 7. There is no significant difference in the general academic achievement of students in coeducational schools and those in single sex schools. 8. There is no significant difference in the general academic achievement between students from high socio-economic background and those from low socioeconomic background. The instrument used to collect data for academic achievement in biology was the SSS II second term examination scores in biology. The instrument used to collect data for general academic achievement was the SSS II second term examination average scores for all subjects. A questionnaire was constructed by the researcher which contained two sections. Section A and B. Section A contained students’ personal data including gender, parents’ socioeconomic background (high and low socioeconomic background) and type of school (co-educational or single sex school). Section B contained questions which purport to measure social, academic and emotional self concept. Fifteen out of the forty questions measured academic self concept, fifteen measured emotional self concept and ten measured social self concept. Twenty of the questions were positively framed while the other twenty were negatively framed. The independent t-test was used as the test statistics for hypotheses 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 and the Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used as the test statistic for hypotheses 2 and 6. For hypothesis one, the calculated t valve of 0.78 was almost the same with the critical value of 0.92 at 0.05 levels of significance. For hypothesis two, the calculated r value of 2.780 was almost the same with the critical value of 2.820 at 0.05 levels of significance and a calculated r value of 2.780 and a critical value of 2.756 at 0.01 alpha levels of significance. For hypothesis three, the calculated t-value of 5.88 was higher than the critical value of 1.960 at 0.05 levels of significance. For hypothesis 4, the calculated t value of 5.32 was higher than the critical t-value of 1.56 at 0.05 alpha levels of significance. For hypothesis 5, the calculated t-test value of 5.34 was higher than the critical value of 1.96 at the alpha levels of significance of 0.05. For hypothesis 6, the calculated r-value of 1.960 was higher than the critical value of 1.630 at 0.05 alpha levels of significance. For hypothesis 7, the calculated t-value of 1.96 was higher than the critical value of 1.63 at 0.05 alpha levels of significance. For hypothesis 8, the calculated t-value of 2.36 was higher than the critical value of 1.63 at 0.05 alpha levels of significance.
Gender, Self Concept., Socio-economic status of parents , Type of school , Students , Achievement in biology, Senior Secondary School, Calabar, Municipality
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