Factors Responsible for Students ’ Lateness to School as Expressed by Nigerian Teachers in Elementary Schools

Students’ lateness to school is one of the challenges faced by school administrators. This research therefore investigated the factors responsible for students’ lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools. The influence of moderating variables of sex, years of teaching experience and educational qualification on the respondents’ expressions was also considered. The study is descriptive in nature and sampled 200 Nigerian teachers in elementary schools. An instrument titled ‘Factors Responsible for Lateness to School Questionnaire (FRLSQ’ was adopted to gather data. The descriptive and inferential statistics were used as methods of data analysis. It was revealed that the factors responsible for students’ lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools are poor preparation for school, going late to bed, distance of school from home, high level of poverty, peer pressure, single parenting among others. It is concluded that the factors responsible for lateness to school are enormous. Practical solutions were therefore recommended.

Lateness generally refers to a situation in which a person arrives a place at a time later than the stipulated time.It is the inability of an individual to be at a place at an agreed time.According to Lauby (2009), lateness in the school context, is when a student get to school at the time exceeds the official time.Literarily, lateness to school refers to a situation whereby a student gets to school when the appropriate time for such as elapsed.
According to Breeze and Markey (2010), lateness can be likened to tardiness that is, not quick in carrying out a task hence, not able to meet up with the scheduled time.
It is also expressed as being late for any [186] observable period that exceeds the stated time.
Lateness to school is like a cancer that impedes the development and hinders the achievement of academic goals (Maile & Olowoyo, 2017).It has been observed that students' lateness is on the increase of indiscipline and this has eaten deep into the Nigerian society (Odebode, 2019).
Students no longer take punctuality in school as they should.The official arrival time for students at school in Nigeria is 7.30 a.m.unfortunately, many students can still be sighted walking around the streets by 9-9.30; they walk around communities unconcerned.The school are doing all they could to curb this act but it seems the effort has no noticeable effect, thus, making lateness to school on the increase.[192] The table above reveals that the crit.Fvalue of 3.00 is less than the cal.F-value of 67.92.Therefore, the hypothesis is rejected.
This shows that there was significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools based on educational qualification thus, the hypothesis was rejected.with a mean score of 65.72.These groups differed significantly from group 3 with mean score 67.28.All the groups differed from one another, but the significant difference noted was because of the mean of Group 3, hence, the significant difference noted in the ANOVA on Table 6 was brought about by secondary school students whose father had postgraduate degree.Therefore, the hypothesis was rejected.

DISCUSSION
The finding of this study showed that the

INTRODUCTION~
Punctuality is the key to any goal-driven organization such as the school.Unpunctuality of students in school has generated lots of concern among stakeholders in the Nigerian society.The school, which is basically established to make individuals learn irrespective of gender, ethnic group or religion, requires these individuals to arrive at school as at when due.This implies that no meaningful activity can take place in school with the occurrence of students' lateness.
This in turn culminates to increase in the turning out of half-baked graduates at all educational institutions in the society.The causes of lateness among students seem to be unclear with many submissions being made by stakeholders.There are many factors that could make a student get late or develop the habit of getting late to school.This could range from sleeping late, poor preparation for school, school factor, illness, economic influence and family background among others, films at night (Marwan, 2014); watching films at night, engagement in too many house chores, lack of motivation for school, lack of stringent rules in school against lateness etc. (Dafiaghor, 2011 for school, going late to bed, distance of school from home, high level of poverty, peer pressure, and single parenting.This finding tallies with Okwelle (2003) stating that factors responsible for lateness to school were negative attitude towards schooling, lack of strict discipline in school, parents not monitoring their children well among other factors.Also the finding is in line with that of Oghuvu (2008) which showed that factors responsible for students' lateness to school were authority and parent factors.Similarly, the findings of this study tally with that of Shapira-Lishchinsky (2007) found that teachers perceived the causes of students' lateness to school as lack of strict discipline in school and at home.This could be that lateness to school is rampant among students.Therefore, teachers could easily observe and express the factors responsible for students' lateness to school.More so, teachers were close to students, they could infer the causes of lateness among students.Mimbar Sekolah Dasar, Volume 6 Number 2 August 2019 [193] Hypothesis 1 stating that there is no significant difference exists in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools based on gender was accepted.This is an indication that in actual fact, no statistically significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools based on gender.This implies that gender did not have any considerable influence on the teachers' expression of factors responsible for students' lateness to school.This finding negates Emore's (2005) findings that there was significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school based on gender.Likewise, this finding tallies with Okpukpara and Chukkwuone's (2007) study revealing that gender influenced respondents' expression of child lateness to school.This finding could be that the respondents are all teachers, they are in the same society and deal with students, hence they could all perceive and express the same factors that could cause students' lateness to school.Therefore, their expressions will not differ.Hypothesis 2 stating that there is no significant difference exists in the factorsresponsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools on the basis of years of teaching experience was not rejected.This implies that there was no significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools on the basis of years of teaching experience.This also means that years of teaching experience had no considerable influence on teachers' expression of factors responsible for lateness to school.This finding is in line with Onayase's (2017) finding that there was no significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school based on years of teaching experience.Similarly, the study of Chabaya, Chiome and Chabaya (2009) revealed that there was .This could be that the respondents are all in-loco parents and in one way or the other render help to students in one way or the other therefore, their expressions of students' lateness to school will not differ.Hypothesis 3 stating that there is no significant difference exists in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary on the basis of educational qualification was accepted.This implies that that there was statistically significant difference in the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools based on educational qualification.This means that the educational qualification of the respondents affected their 'expressions on factors responsible for lateness.This finding tallies with a study students' lateness to school.However, the finding of Jumane, Maina and Ankoma-Sey negated the finding of this study as their study showed that educational level affected the expression of students' lateness to school.This finding could be that respondents who have postgraduate degree are more knowledgeable and are able to perceive and express the causes of students' lateness to school.CONCLUSION It can be concluded that factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools were poor preparation for school, going late to bed, distance of school from home, high level of poverty, are the first teacher of the children.They should monitor their children and ensure that they get to Mimbar Sekolah Dasar, Volume 6 Number 2 August 2019 [195] school early.They should help students to prepare well for school right from the previous day.They should be encouraged to sleep early so as to wake up early the next day to prepare for school.2. Students look up to teachers for emulation, therefore, teachers should be of good character and model good behaviors for students to emulate.They should endeavor to get to school and classes on time themselves.3. Schools are established to mold and shape students.School authority should give strict sanctioning to students who had turned lateness to school to habitual habit.They could also come up with other strict measures that could halt habitual late coming among students.4. As punctuality is the sole of any business, therefore, students as the future leaders should cultivate the habit of preparing on time for school and going to bed early so that they could wake on time to prepare for school.5. Counsellors are professionals who orientate, inform, educate and help people with their concerns; these professionals should enlighten all stake holders on the need to get to school and work on time as it has been revealed that students emulate figures of authorities.

Table 1 .
). Percentage Distribution of which adopted a theoretical approach to the problem at hand.Similarly, Chabaya, Chiome and Chabaya (2009) focused on students' failure to submit research on time.This study centered on both quantitative and qualitative analysis of students and teachers at a tertiary institution but the present study centered on teachers at the elementary school level.Furthermore, Jummane, Maina and Ankoma-Sey (2015) and Onoyase (2017) worked on lateness in Zaria and Ondo States, Nigeria.Even though these researches were on students' lateness to school, it was carried out in other parts of the country.Therefore the study of this nature is needed to address the causes of lateness to school from the elementary teachers in Oshogbo, Nigeria.It is on this background information that we deemed [188] it fit to investigate the factors responsible for students' lateness to school as expressed by Nigerian teachers in elementary schools.achievement, irresponsibility and failure in life among other aftermaths.Some researchers have conducted similar researches only that lateness is still on the increase for instance, the study of Alio (2015) was centered on analysis of students' late-coming factors in selected secondary schools in Zaria.Onoyase (2017) also looked at lateness as a recurrent

Table 2 .
Mean and Rank Order of Factors Responsible for students' Lateness to School.

Table 3 .
Mean, Standard Deviation and t-value Showing Factors Responsible for students' Lateness to School Based on Gender.

Table 4 .
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on the Factors Responsible for students' Lateness to School based on Years of teaching experience.

Table 6 .
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on the Factors Responsible for Students' Lateness to School based on Educational qualification.

Table 7 .
Direction of Difference in the Causes of Lateness to School based on Educational qualification.