Abstract
The academic performance of students in mathematics has been a source of concern to researchers, educators, government and parents. Efforts to improve students?EUR(TM) outcomes in mathematics have led to several studies to determine the predictors of academic performance in mathematics among various groups of individuals. This study, therefore, examined gender, school location, age, and subject combination as predictors of secondary school students?EUR(TM) academic performance in mathematics in Taraba State, Nigeria. The ex post facto design was adopted for the study. Simple random sampling was used to select a sample size of 444 (238 male and 206 female) students out of 3,966 in 12 senior secondary schools in Jalingo Education Zone of Taraba state (2016/2017 academic session). Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) was used for data collection. KR-20 formular was used to measure the internal consistency of MAT. This yielded a reliability index of .86. Standard Multiple Regression (SMR) was used for data analyses. Findings of the study revealed that all the predictors accounted for less than 1% of the variance of academic performance in mathematics. Therefore, it was recommended that negative beliefs and practices that tend inhibit performance in mathematics, on the basis of these predictors should be discarded.