Class Attendance and Gender Effects on Undergraduate Students’ Achievement in a Social Studies Course in Botswana.

The study examined class attendance and gender effects on undergraduate students’ achievement in a Social Studies course. The whole group of seventy six (76) year three undergraduate students of the department of primary education, University of Botswana who registered for the course constituted the study sample. The record of students’ attendance in the course taken from the beginning of the semester was computed and compared with their overall score in the course. Multiple comparisons, Analysis of Variance and T-test were used to analyse the data to determine the relative and interaction effects of the independent variables on the dependent. Two research hypotheses were tested for significance at .05 probability level. The results indicate that students’ level of attendance has a significant influence on their academic performance in Social Studies. It was also found that gender has a significant effect on the subjects’ performances with male students performing better than their female counterparts. Implications of these findings for appropriate remediation programmes for low attendance students were discussed