Self-Esteem and Academic Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Gombe Metropolis: Implication for Counselling

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between Self-esteem and the Academic Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Gombe Metropolis: Implication for Counselling. A descriptive survey design was adopted. While purposive sampling procedure was used to select six Senior Secondary Schools in Gombe Metropolis. In all, 346 students were selected using Krejcie and Morgan’s table of determining sample size in a given population. Two set of instruments were used for data collection in this study namely: Adopted version of Akinboye’s Adolescent Personality Data Inventory (APDI) Subscale A to measure the Students’ Self-esteem and researcher designed Academic Performance Test (APT) which measured academic performance of students in Mathematics and English Language. Data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and t-test with the use of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 15.0. The result showed that self-esteem has no significant relationship with Senior Secondary School Students Academic Performance while female students performed better in Mathematics and English Language subjects than their male counterpart in Gombe Metropolis. Based on these findings, it was recommended that counsellors should assist the students in developing positive self-esteem in order to improve their academic performance and to minimize the level of failure in both terminal and public examination.