Investigation of Proficiency in Supportive Mathematics Topics among Senior Secondary Science Students in Rivers State

Supportive mathematics topics are those mathematics topics, learned earlier by senior secondary two (SS II) science students, that can help them succeed in their science subjects and courses. Studies revealed that secondary students have poor mathematical skills. This study therefore investigated students’ proficiency in some supportive mathematics topics as it relates to their gender and the location of their schools. Descriptive research design was adopted. Simple random sampling and stratified sampling were used to select1652 students from 15 rural and 15 urban coeducational public secondary schools in Rivers State. Supportive mathematics Test (r=0.80) was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyse the data at 5%level of significance. The result revealed that the highest mean score in supportive mathematics topics was in Decimal Fraction and Approximation (
? =42.65)        which is below average, meaning that, their performance in supportive mathematics was poor. There was no significant difference between the mean proficiency scores of male and female students in all the supportive mathematics topics (p>0.05). The mean proficiency scores better than that of rural students. It was recommended among others that students should take their mathematics lessons seriously at all levels of education because the proficiency they acquire from their junior mathematics classes may positively or negatively influence their success in most science subjects and even science courses in higher institutions. of supportive mathematics topics of urban students were significantly