Causes of the differences in academic performance in form four national examinations between public and private secondary schools in Kinondoni district

This study investigated the causes of the differences in academic performance in Form Four National Examinations between public and private secondary schools in Kinondoni District in Dar es Salaam region. The study employed quantitative approach where the causal-comparative design was used to collect data from the heads of schools and academic masters or mistresses in both, private and public secondary schools. The schools were matched on the basis of their performance in Form Four National Examination results. Thus one good performing and one poorly performing school was selected in both private and public secondary schools respectively. The data collected were analyzed quantitatively by using the SPSS Version 11.0 to compute frequencies, percentages, and Pearson’s Product Moment Coefficients between students’ entry scores and their academic performance in Form Four National Examinations. The study revealed that if other factors are controlled, students’ entry qualifications and teachers’ qualifications greatly contributed to the differences in academic performance in Form Four National Examinations between private and public secondary schools and between entry and exit marks was significant at 0.507,p˂0.01 The study recommended that, private and public secondary schools should conduct remedial programs for students enrolled with low marks to improve their academic performance. Educational policy makers and planners should have a long term plan (10-20 years) to train a large number of well qualified teachers to avoid crash programs.