Abstract
The study examined the academic performance in Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) among business studies students in Ovia South West LGA of Edo State. The purpose of the study was to basically compare business studies students’ academic performance in BECE between public and private schools. Three research questions guided the study. These research questions were hypothesized and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Ex-post facto was the research design used. The total population of the study consisted 3,652 drawn from 14 publics and 11 private schools. From the population, 2,517 were drawn from public schoolswhile 1,135 was drawn from private schoolsthat sat for BECE in 2018 and 2019. The need for sampling did not arise as the population constituted the sample because of manageable size. Simple percentage (%) was used to answer the research questions while Chi-Square (x2) was used to test the three hypotheses. The percentage performance indicated that public school students in 2018 had better academic performance in business studies in BECE while private school students had better academic percentage performance in 2019. The findings from the hypotheses indicated that there were significant differences in BECE business studies academic performance in favour of public schools for the two years in total. The findings also revealed significant difference in academic performance among male and female students in public schools than their peer in private schools. The study therefore recommended that private schools management should improve on the academic performance of their students in business studies through concerted efforts such as engagement of teachers in the subject area; public and private schools should be seen as complementary and not rivalry in approach; as much as practicable, the teaching of business studies should be taught by only trained and certified business educators among others.