The Reading Habits of Public Senior Secondary School Students in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Improving the academic achievement and achieving excellent results by secondary school students in both external and internal examinations have been the concern of all stakeholder. Without developing a good reading habit, students may not attain success in their academic endeavours. Therefore, the study sets out to examine the reading habits of public senior secondary school students in Ogun State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. The target population comprised (977) students in senior secondary students 3(SS3) in 21 public senior secondary schools in Ogun State, Nigeria. Stratified sampling technique was used. The questionnaire was used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using frequency, percentage counts and the hypothesis was tested using one-way-ANOVA. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents spent more than an hour reading every day as the total time spent on reading daily by most of the respondents was between 1-2 hours. They also preferred to read at home. Among the indicated hindrances to the students reading habit, student addiction to social media; television and radio programmes were rated higher. The result of One-way ANOVA indicated that there was no statistically significant difference reading habits among Science, Art and Commercial students in public senior secondary school in Ogun State. (F (2, 295) = .121, p>. Based on the findings, the study recommended that the students should be encouraged to read for pleasure because extensive reading of material of many kinds may improve public secondary school students’ academic achievement in Ogun state.