Instructional Television Programmes and Academic Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Anambra State, Nigeria

This study investigated instructional Television (ITV) programmes and Academic performance of Senior Secondary School students in Anambra state-Nigeria. The need for the study arose from the problem of the declining nature of West African school certificate examination results of senior secondary school students in Anambra state on yearly basis. For example, the WAEC analysis released for 2010 academic session shows that students from Anambra state had 40% average in English language and 32% in mathematics. In 2011 and 2012, the result declined further with 30% in English language and 28% in mathematics. This is despite the fact that there are instructional television programmes aimed at complementing classroom teaching in order to improve on the results of students. The study adopted survey research design using questionnaire, interview schedule, and academic curriculum as instruments for data collection. The questionnaire was administered to 500 students drawn from a population of 50,832 senior secondary school students in Anambra state. The interview schedule was used in interviewing the producers of ITV programmes in Anambra Broadcasting service and Nigeria Television Authority. The result indicated, among other considerations, that senior secondary school students in Anambra do not watch ITV programs regularly and the basic reason for this is lack of electric power supply. Among those who watched the programmes, only 9% utilized the contents of the programmes on regular basis while 91% utilized the programmes only when they wanted to. This was as a result of lack of encouragement from teachers, parents and guardians and also non-utilization of contents in class. Hence, there was a slight difference in the academic performance of those who watched and those who did not watch ITV programmes. Among those who watched the programme, only 6% had excellent grades in English Language while 3% had excellent grades in mathematics, whereas 4% had excellent grades in English language. It was recommended, among other considerations, that secondary school teachers should encourage students to always watch ITV programmes while Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCH), on its part, should provide regular electric power supply to enable students watch ITV programmes regularly.Key words: ITV programmes, academic performance, utilization of ITV and exposure to ITV programme