Determinants of Students’ Academic Achievement and Attitude in Mathematics Subject: A Case Study at Gindeberet Preparatory School

Students' academic problem in the achievement of Mathematics education dominates persistently in Gindeberet preparatory school. The insight into the study arose from annual report of school and the researcher's teaching experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors that influence student’s achievement towards Mathematics and examine students' attitude towards Mathematics in preparatory school at Gindeberet Woreda. In this study, target population was 1029 (male= 529 and female=500) of grade 11 students. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the representative from the entire population. Thus, among the total sample (154), 87 were male and 67 were female. Eleven (11) Mathematics teachers were also selected availably. Authors used two data collection instruments; Attitude towards Mathematics Inventory developed by Tapia and Marsh (2004) and questionnaires were employed. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied for data analysis. The result of this study revealed that, teachers are less committed in teaching methods and strategies that they have used in their lesson were determinants of students' achievement in Mathematics from teachers side and also the students' achievement were determine by parents income, mother educational level, parental involvement, classmate encouragement, time the spent on mathematics task were main statistical significant determinants of students achievement in Mathematics and attitude of students towards Mathematics was neutral in this study. Based on this findings and conclusion valuable recommendations were formed. Thus, based on students attitude towards Mathematics and on others determinants of students achievements in Mathematics; teachers, parents, school administrators, supervisors, communities and other stakeholders should have discussed and work together to improve students success in mathematics cooperatively.