ABSTRACT
The study investigated the effect of some non-psychological variables on public secondary school dropouts in Kaduna state. To guide the study, four research questions were asked and answered, four Null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population consisted of all the dropout students aged 14-19 years from public secondary schools in Kaduna State. 450 students were used as samples of study. The design of the study was Expost facto using the past school attendance registers and cumulative record as the major instruments. The data was collected using self-constructed scale tagged Dropouts Assessment Scale (DAS) developed by the researcher, validated by experts at reliability coefficient of γ0.84. The data collected were expressed using percentage and frequency distribution of dropout and was analyzed with chi-square statistics. The results indicated that there was significant relationship between school location and the rate of school dropout in public secondary schools in Kaduna State, there was significant relationship between parental level of Education and the rate of school dropout in public secondary schools in Kaduna State, there was significant relationship between the class level and the rate of dropout in public secondary school in Kaduna State. However, further analysis in the fourth hypothesis clearly showed that there was no significant relationship between Gender and the rate of dropout in public secondary schools in Kaduna State. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that more schools should be established in rural areas so as to make schools readily accessible for the students. It was also recommended that Guidance Counselors need to reorientate students and the parents with lower level of education on the benefits of school completion. More school counselors should be trained by the government and also be employed by the respective state government, especially, Kaduna state in particular in order to determine methods for inspiring and sustaining a passion for learning and commitment among secondary school students that can reduce or wipe out dropout. Further recommendation is the need for the state ministry of education in collaboration with the school counselors to organize public enlightenment programmes that will aim at educating students and parents on the benefits of completing secondary school education.