Selection bias is an educational and a social malady which is of concern to every educator especially educational administrator when allocating educational opportunities to learners based on previous performance. Bias in predicting who passes or who fails and hence in selection exists if the same prediction equation is used for different groups, for example, for both gender when in fact such prediction, given the tests involved, is different for male and female learners. As a check for this, there is always the need to perform differential prediction for the sexes. The purpose for this descriptive study is to investigate gender as a factor in the prediction of performance in BGCSE physical examination by coursework and forecast grades among secondary school students in Botswana. The sample composed of 2292 (1432 males and 860 females) students who, based on Botswana Examination Council (BEC) records, obtained grades in coursework, forecast and BGCSE physical education grades for 2005 through 2008. The Pearson correlation and regression analyses done using SPSS revealed that though coursework and forecast grades significantly predict the BGCSE grades in physical education among senior secondary school students in Botswana, based on each year's data, gender does not influence such prediction significantly, but for cumulative data across all the years it does.

The study looked at the location of schools as it relates to the academic performance of students in Botswana. The study population was the results of Junior Certificate (JC) Agriculture Examinations conducted in 2009 among 206 secondary schools in rural, peri-urban and urban areas of Botswana. One hypothesis was formulated and tested. Data were analysed using regression. When comparing three pairs (urban and peri-urban), (urban and rural) and (peri-urban and rural), the results show that the beta weights when transformed into z-values are not significantly different and are less than the critical values (1.96) given alpha level of 0.05. The results showed no significant difference between students' academic performance in rural, peri-urban and urban secondary schools in agriculture junior school certificate examinations. The study has proven that school location has no bearing on student academic performance in agriculture junior school certificate examinations in Botswana.