School Spatial Distribution and Students' Academic Performance in Oyo State Public Secondary Schools

The purpose of this research was to examine the contributions of spatial distribution on students' academic performance in school certificate examinations with respect to English language and Mathematics in Oyo State public senior secondary schools with a view to bringing out optimal productivity. Two hypotheses were formulated and tested. The population involved all the Senior Secondary School (SSS 3) students' and teachers in senior secondary schools in all the public senior secondary schools in Oyo-State. Data available as at the time of data collection for this study indicated that there are 3,200 SSS 3 students and 2,640 teachers in Senior secondary schools in all the 400 public secondary schools. Stratified random sampling method was used to select the local government areas, the schools, teachers and students. Two research instruments were used for this study that is Spatial Distribution Questionnaire developed by Olaniyonu (1987) and pro forma for students' results in SSCE English language and Mathematics. The findings revealed that spatial distribution alone significantly contributed to the variance in the urban and rural located students' performance scores in school certificate examinations in English Language and Mathematics. Base on the findings It is therefore recommended that Oyo State Government must look into spatial distribution of schools and handle spatial distribution of schools with extreme care. School should not be arbitrarily located and politicize and Government should follow the UNESCO recommendation on students' journey to and fro schools hence, the students' journey to the school should not exceed 1.5 kilometer among others.