Effects of Teenage Pregnancy on Education of Female Students in Calabar South Local Government Area, Cross River State

This research project examined the Effects of Pregnancy on Education of Female Students in Calabar South LGA, Cross River State. A descriptive survey design was used to conduct the study. Three research questions and hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study population was 1778 teenage girls. Taro Yamane’s was used to obtain the population size of 327 respondents. Structured questionnaire was face validated and used to collect data, the reliability was determined with Cronbach’s alpha using SPSS which revealed a 0.900, 0.905 and 0.901 coefficient for question 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Data collected was subject to descriptive statistics using percentages, mean and standard deviation and presented in tables. The hypotheses were tested with Pearson’s correlation coefficient at 0.05 significance level. The findings of the study revealed that teenage pregnancy affects the education of female students in Calabar South LGA. There is a negative relationship between teenage pregnancy and school attendance, academic interest and academic output. This means that, if the rate of teenage pregnancy is high, there will be low record of school attendance, academic interest and academic output respectively. Based on the findings, it was recommended amongst others, that, school-based daycare facilities be provided for soon to be/already teenage mothers, policies should be introduced to permit teenage mothers to remain in secondary school education, sex education should be initiated as early as 10 years of age and that appropriate messages should be designed for specific age group to be included in the school curriculum, among others.