Assessment of Chemistry Laboratory Equipment Availability and Practice: A Comparative Study Between Damot and Jiga Secondary Schools

Abstract

The project was designed to compare the laboratory equipment availability (facilities) and status of practical work between Damot senior secondary school and Jiga senior secondary school and their performance with the standard (average test value). All chemistry teachers and 30 students from each secondary schools a total of 84 respondents were involved. Closed ended questionnaire were prepared and descriptive survey method was employed to describe and one sample t-test method was used to assess the degree of availability of facility and the status of implementation and independent t-test was used to compare the degree of availability of facility and the status of implementation. Total average equipment availability and total average laboratory practice (Mean=2.09, sd=0.29, t(83)=-12.53, p<0.05) is far from the test value (2.5). Average Laboratory equipment availability and laboratory practice in Damot high school is (Mean=2.31, SD= 0.221, n=43) had statistically significant difference from Jiga high school (Mean=1.87, SD=0.158, n=41), t(82) =10.611, p<0.05, Cohen’s d=2.32. From the analysis of Chemistry laboratory equipment availability and laboratory practice in both Damot secondary school and Jiga secondary school were found in very low level and much far less than the average availability of chemistry laboratory equipment and status of laboratory practice. From the data analysis average chemistry laboratory equipment availability and status of laboratory practice of Damot secondary school is better than that of Jiga secondary school.