Assessing the Impact of Climate-Induced Flooding on Mathematics Achievement Among Secondary Students in Nigeria

Abstract

Climate change refers to variations in the weather pattern of a place over some time, which may lead to flooding, drought, or wildfire. In the River Niger Basin of the South-South Zone of Nigeria, climate change has resulted in flooding, which led to disruption in communication, commerce, economy, agriculture, and education. It also resulted in an interruption in academic activities in schools and thereafter, the consequential implication on the academic achievement of students which followed. This paper is a report of a causal-comparative or ex-post factor research into the effect of flooding on the achievement of secondary school students in mathematics in Ogba, Egbema, and Ndoni Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria. Ten out of twenty-seven secondary schools were randomly sampled for the study. Five hundred students in their Senior Secondary Class Two (SS2) were randomly selected for the study. This comprised 250 boys and 250 girls. Fifty students (25 boys and 25 girls) were randomly selected from each of the ten schools. The students’ examination results used for the study for three terms were collected from the examination result master sheets and their achievement scores in mathematics were extracted and used for the analysis. The findings revealed that there exist significant differences in the achievement in mathematics of the students before, during, and after flooding. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Scheffe’s test and t-test. The result shows that achievement in mathematics was higher before and after flooding than during the flooding. The effect of climate change (flooding) on gender and achievement in mathematics was also studied. It was discovered that the gender gap in mathematics achievement of secondary school students widened during the flooding. This indicated that the effects of climate change on girls are worse than on boys educationally. The use of palliative to mitigate the effect of climate change–flooding, on the achievement of students in mathematics and, most importantly, the achievement of the girl child is recommended.