ACCESS, UTILIZATION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE THE CASE OF WOLKITE TOWN AND KEBENA WOREDA GOVERNMENT SECONAARY SCHOOLS GURAGE ZONE, CENTRAL ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how government owned secondary schools access andutilize instructional materials in classrooms and how this contributes to academic perfor mance of students. The objectives of the research were to explore the access for instructional materials, assess the utilization of the materials by teachers and students and to assess the ef fect of the utilization of instructional materials on students’ academic performance.The study adopted a deiscriptive survey design. The study considers sample of government owned sec ondary schools in wolkite town and kebena woreda. Out of 8 government secondary schools in wolkite town and kebena woreda 4 schools are selected by using stratified random sampling technique for data collection. In each sample school, 4 teachers and 91 students are considered for the structured and semi-structured questionnaire. Also head of 1 school and 1 Pedagogical center officers are interviewed questionnaire based interview. Instructional ma terials are the key to teachers’ and students’ performance. Most government secondary schools in wolkite town and kebena woreda in general suffer from shortage of essential teach ing and learning materials. The study shows insufficient access of instructional materials in all schools and inadequate utilization of the accessed IMS, the effect of utilization of IMS to improve their students’ performance is found to be significant.Also the students‘academic per formance in the class in the study area is low which in turn indicates the quality of education that is significantly affected in the study area.