Teachers’ Recruitment Process and Students’ Academic Performance in Lagos State Public Junior Secondary Schools, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between the teachers’ recruitment process and students' academic performance in Lagos State public junior secondary school, Nigeria. The study was anchored on human capital theory. The correlational design was adopted and population of the study comprised of 8,865 teachers and all JSS 3 students in the 346 public junior secondary school in Lagos State, Nigeria. Taro Yamane was used to determine sample size of 384 teachers and selected through simple random sampling. Two research questions and hypotheses were raised and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Two research instruments titled: Teachers Recruitment Process Questionnaire (TRPQ) and SSS 3 Student Record Observation Format (ROF) were used for data collection. The validity of the instruments was determined by test expert and Cronbach alpha was used to determine the reliability at 0.70 and 0.71. The data collected were analysed using Pearson Product Moment correlation through SPSS version 26.0. The findings showed significant relationships between teachers’ selection process and students’ academic performance (r = .672; N = 384; p < .05), and between teachers’ recruitment process and students’ academic performance (r = .678; N = 384; p < .05). The study concluded that teachers’ recruitment process contributes significantly to students’ academic performance in junior secondary schools and recommended merit-based and transparent recruitment and selection procedures in Lagos State.