Achievement of Girls and Boys in Government Secondary Schools of Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia

Education, in its broadest sense, may be defined as a process designed to inculcate the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to enable individuals to cope effectively with their environment. Its primary purpose is to foster and promote the fullest individual self-realization for all people. Achieving this goal requires understanding of commitment to the proposition that education is a primary instrument for social and economic advancement of human welfare. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to carry out an analysis of the achievement of girls and boys education in Wolaita zone government secondary schools. Multistage sampling method was used. First, stratified random sampling method was employed to select secondary schools from both urban and rural areas in different districts. Hence, two urban and three rural secondary schools were included in the study randomly. Secondly, from each stratum schools are selected using simple random sampling, lottery methods. Therefore, the schools included in the study are: Areka and Gununo secondary schools from urban schools, and Shanto, Hembecho and Gacheno secondary schools from rural schools. Thirdly, the respondents from each school were selected using systematic random sampling method. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to comparatively study the enrollment, achievement and attrition of female and male students in government secondary schools of Wolaita zone. The finding of the study reveals male students outperform their female counterparts in their academic achievement. Self-motivation and burden in household chores were found being the major reason for the difference in academic achievement. Generally females drop out of school in greater percentage compared to males in government secondary schools in the study area.It is recommended that continual awareness creation should be carried out so that families understand the importance of education. Keywords: Achievement, Boys and Girs, Wolaita, Ethiopia