The main purpose of the study was to find out if interest in extra-curricular activities has any influence on self-efficacy with reference to social self-efficacy, academic self-efficacy, language self-efficacy and moral self-efficacy. The ex-post facto design was adopted for the study. A sample of 1,586 students was randomly selected from the public secondary schools in Cross River State for the study. A questionnaire titled “Interest in Extra Curricular Activity and Self-Efficacy (IECASEQ) was the instrument used for data collection. The face validity of the instrument was determined by two experts in test and measurement and two in educational psychology. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha reliability method. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics. The results revealed that interest in co-curricular activities significantly influenced social self-efficacy, academic self-efficacy, language self-efficacy, moral self-efficacy and overall self-efficacy. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that teacher and school administrators should create opportunities for students to travel for excursions, and not see involvement in co-curricular activities as a distraction to students.

Handling of issues and challenges in education at the primary school level believed to be the foundation on which other levels of education rest on will either promote or mar the onward movement of individuals to the other levels of education and the achievement of the objective of education as an instrument for national development. It is against this background that this study attempted to examine the causes of school absenteeism among primary school pupils in the three senatorial zones of Cross River State and proffer solution to remedy the problem. Two research questions were posed to direct the study. Data were collected with the researcher's developed and structured questionnaire captioned: School Absenteeism Questionnaire (SAQ). Multi-stage sampling technique involving stratified and simple random sampling procedures were used to select three hundred and twenty (320) pupils out of three hundred and two thousand, two hundred and ten (302,210) primary six pupils in public schools in Cross River State. They were drawn from 16 primary schools in eight (8) randomly selected local government areas across the three (3) senatorial Zones in Cross River State. Frequencies and simple percentages were utilized to answer the research questions. The finding revealed that financial constraints, lack of interest, illnesses, pampering from family members, location of school were the major causes of absenteeism among pupils. It was recommended among others that parents and their children and/or wards should be counselled on the effect of absenteeism on school performance and its long term consequences on national development.

The article aims to discuss teaching effectiveness in relation to teacher demographic factors like teachers’ age and teachers’ gender among Secondary School teachers in Calabar Education Zone of Cross River State, Nigeria. To achieve this aim, two hypotheses were stated and tested. These variables have important role to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness as scholarly proven through literatures. The descriptive survey design was adopted for use. The sample consist of one hundred and sixty-four (164) teachers and three hundred and twenty-eight (328) student from the Calabar Education Zone. Teachers’ Demographic Factors Questionnaire (TDFQ) and Teaching Effectiveness Questionnaire (TEQ) were developed by the researcher and validated by experts in Sociology of Education and Test/Measurement. The descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance, a post-hoc scheffe & independent t-test were used. The result revealed that teachers’ age and gender significantly influence teaching effectiveness. Based on the findings, it is recommended among others that Government should see teachers age as an asset thereby put in more resources to train them so that they will be of benefit to the students and the society at large.