Supervised machine learning models for predicting student mathematics performance in Somaliland primary examinations 2023

The declining mathematics performance among primary school students in Somaliland, as evidenced by the increasing failure rate from 51.9% in 2020 to 65.58% in 2023, has prompted the need to investigate the influencing factors and potential predictive models. This study leverages data from the 2022/2023 Somaliland National Examinations to identify and analyze these factors. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of various supervised machine learning models in predicting mathematics performance among primary school students and identify the factors contributing to performance disparities. Data were drawn from the 2022/2023 Somaliland National Examination database, which covered 20,950 students. Six supervised machine learning models- logistic regression, decision tree, random forest, Naïve Bayes, support vector machine (SVM), and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN)-were applied to predict student performance. Performance metrics, such as accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, F1-score, and AUC, were used to evaluate the models. Significant regional and demographic differences were observed between the groups. Regions such as Awdal and Maroodi Jeeh showed high failure rates, whereas the Sheekh and Sanaag regions demonstrated higher success rates than the others. Males (67.17%) failed more frequently than females (63.52%), and urban schools (67.64%) performed worse than rural schools (45.21%). The Naïve Bayes model achieved the highest accuracy of 98.6%, followed by the KNN model at 80.3%. Other models, such as Random Forest and Logistic Regression, demonstrated moderate success, whereas SVM performed the least effectively. The findings indicate that regional, sex, and school-type disparities significantly influence mathematics performance. The Naive Bayes model was the most effective in predicting performance, and these insights can be used for targeted interventions to improve the educational outcomes.