Instructional Supervision Practices and Student Achievement in Core Subjects in Secondary Schools in Oyo State

This study analyses the relationship between instructional supervision practices and student achievement in core subjects in public secondary schools in Oyo State, South West Nigeria. While instructional supervision is recognised as a school improvement lever, its empirical relationship with student learning outcomes in Nigerian schools has received limited analytical investigation. The study employs a cross-sectional survey and ex-post facto design, drawing a sample of 400 teachers and 1,200 students from 24 schools across Ibadan North, Oyo East, and Ogbomosho South local government areas. Data instruments include a validated instructional supervision quality questionnaire and students' West African Senior School Certificate Examination scores in Mathematics, English Language, and Biology. Multiple regression and hierarchical regression analyses were applied. The study is grounded in the Instructional Leadership Theory and the Process-Product Research Paradigm. It examines supervision frequency, observation quality, feedback specificity, and post-observation follow-up as supervision dimensions predicting student achievement. Findings are expected to reveal that feedback specificity and post-observation coaching are the strongest predictors of student performance gains. The study also uses multilevel modelling to account for school-level clustering effects. Recommendations target the Oyo State Secondary Education Management Board on redesigning supervision frameworks from compliance auditing to developmental instructional coaching models. The findings fill a notable empirical gap in the South West school management literature. Keywords: instructional supervision, student achievement, secondary schools, Oyo State, school improvement