Impact of Class Size on Learning, Behavioral and General Attitudes of Students in Secondary Schools in Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria

Poor performance of university undergraduate students has been traced to their poor academic performance and attitudes in secondary schools. There was concern over whether class size was responsible for this. Researches on the effect of class size on academic performance and achievement exist. The study was carried out to investigate the impact of class size on students’ attitude to studies using four (4) selected secondary schools in Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria. Possible effect of class size on the general, learning and behavioral attitudes were considered. Its impact was also correlated with effect of other possible factors. Questionnaires were administered to three hundred and sixty students selected evenly from JSS1-SS2 classes in each of the schools. Two of the schools were private while the other two were owned by government. Ten (10) hypotheses were tested in the study. It was found that class size has a highly significant impact on students’ attitudes to studies in secondary school (p\u3c 0.05). It affects students’ attention most strongly, then punctuality, motivation and participation but not the rate of participation and asking or answering questions. The result also revealed that excessive noise is the most common behavioral attitude associated with large classes. Hence, a serious attention should be paid to class size in every educational setting for optimum learning achievement