Abstract

The paper examined the impact of early marriage on girl child’s psycho-academic performance in secondary schools in Makurdi and Gwer-East Local Government Area of Benue State .Two research questions and two research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study is 6,037 female students from 28 government and grant-aided secondary schools in Makurdi and Gwer-EastLocal Government Area of Benue State. The sample size was 403 married girls out of 6,037 students. The sampling technique that was used was multi- stage sampling technique .The instrument for data collection is a researcher developed questionnaire titled: Early Marriage and Psycho-academic Performance Questionnaire (EMPPQ). The questionnaire was trial tested using 20 students who were not part of the population for the study. The reliability of instrument was measured using Cronbach alpha. It yielded a coefficient of 0.94. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions. A cut-off point of 2.50 was used for decision making. Chi-square was used to test the hypotheses. Based on the findings it was concluded that early marriage has significant impact on girl-child’s self-concept and class attendance in secondary schools in Makurdi and Gwer-East Local Government Areas of Benue State. It was recommended among others that academic performance and mental health be improved in school settings with support strategies such as educational guidance, counselling and psychotherapy or other psycho-educational programmes such as teaching life skills which will enhance self- concept and class attendance of the girl child.