AN ASSESSMENT OF THE DIFFERENCES IN MATHEMATICS AND CHEMISTRY PERFORMANCE BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BOMET DISTRICT, KENYA

The study sought to determine whether or not there is a difference in the performance in Mathematics and Chemistry subjects between boys and girls in secondary schools in Kenya. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of gender role stereotypes on academic performance among secondary school students in Bomet District, Kenya. Purposive sampling was used to select the schools that were involved in the study and stratified random sampling plan was used to select the participants of the study. A sample of 208 students was randomly selected from the form four classes. A five point Likert scale questionnaire with 20 items was used to obtain measures of students’ attitudes. Students’ performance in mathematics and Chemistry were obtained from school records. Descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviation and standard error were used to compare academic performance of students with different attitude towards gender role stereotypes. The inferential statistics used included t-test, Pearson correlation co-efficient and ANOVA. The study found that there was a disparity in performance in Chemistry and Mathematics between boys and girls. The implication is that a significant relationship exists between the student’s gender and his/her performance in mathematics and chemistry in mixed secondary schools. Thus, teachers of Mathematics and Chemistry in co-educational schools should be cautious about gender disparity. They should be analyzing performance in the subjects according to students’ gender in order to monitor this disparity and to foster healthy competition between boys and girls in these two subjects. Thus, teachers of guidance and counselling should come up with programmes of confidence building that will enhance girls’ confidence in the two subjects. This can be done by involving female role models such as university lecturers, students pursuing science based courses and female engineers in motivational conferences. The findings are beneficial to teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders in education as they examine the barriers of gender equity with respect to performance in mathematics and chemistry and to enable girls to have more access to science based courses in institutions of higher learning.