The predictive validity of form two secondary education examinations (FTSEE) on students’ performance in the certificate of secondary education examinations (CSEE) in Tanzania for mathematics and Kiswahili subjects.

The study was designed to determine the predictive validity between students’ performances in Form Two Secondary Education Examination (FTSEE) and Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations (CSEE) by carrying out an analysis between FTSEE and CSEE grades for candidates who did FTSEE in 2006 and later did the CSEE in 2008 in Mathematics and Kiswahili. A sample of 1383 paired students’ FTSEE and CSEE scores of Mathematics and Kiswahili were correlated involving nine schools from three Educational Zones namely Eastern, Central and Southern highlands. The Statistical Package for Social Science, Sub- program Correlations was used to calculate the Correlation Coefficients. Findings show that the predictive validity of FTSEE to CSEE is significantly very weak ranging from r= 0.005 to r= 0.277 regardless of sex, location of school or types of school. The study reveals that, though the predictive value is overall very weak it was found to be higher for females than males, higher for rural schools than urban schools and also higher in Boarding than both Mixed and Day schools. It is recommended that, the use of FTSEE as a predictive examination for students CSEE performance as intended by Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC, 1984) should be revisited. Also studies should be conducted so as to determine the possible reasons for the findings obtained in this work.