EVALUATION OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL PUPILS' PERFORMANCE IN CORE SCIENCE SUBJECTS AT WASSCE IN SOUTHERN SIERRA LEONE, 2016-2020

Abstract

This study evaluated senior secondary school pupils’ performance in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in the Southern Region of Sierra Leone. An ex-post facto design was used to analyse examination records from 20 selected senior secondary schools across five examination cycles, 2016–2020, corresponding to the 2015/2016–2019/2020 academic sessions. The analysis covered 82,756 subject registrations and used frequencies, percentages, weighted credit rates, trend charts, and an exploratory repeated-measures analysis of variance based on the five annual A1–C6 rates for each subject. Overall, 60,898 entries attained A1–C6, representing a combined credit rate of 73.6%. Chemistry recorded the highest five-year weighted credit rate (81.3%), followed by Biology (73.6%) and Physics (65.8%). Performance fluctuated across the period rather than following a consistent upward or downward pattern. Chemistry reached its highest credit rate in 2017/2018 (93.1%), while Biology and Physics recorded their highest rates in 2018/2019 (83.1% and 86.6%, respectively). The exploratory repeated-measures ANOVA did not show a statistically significant difference among the three annual subject-rate series, F (2, 8) = 2.61, p = .134. Because the analysis used only five annual aggregate observations per subject, this inferential result should be interpreted cautiously. The findings indicate the need for sustained, subject-specific monitoring and further school-level research, particularly to understand the comparatively lower and more variable performance observed in Physics.