Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol 3, No 1, 2012 23 A Correlational Analysis of Students’ Achievement in Waec and Neco Mathematics Ajao, I. Seyi 1 Awogbemi, A. Clement 2 * 1 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. 2 National Mathematical Centre, Kwali, Sheda, Abuja, Nigeria. * E- mail of corresponding author: awogbemiadeyeye@yahoo.com Abstract: This study presents the findings of the relationship between students’ achievement in mathematics conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO) in four selected secondary schools in Ifedayo Local Government Area, Osun State, Nigeria.The analysis showed that there is significant positive relationship between mathematics in all the selected schools contrary to the hypothesis that says there is no relationship in WAEC and NECO mathematics results in the schools. It is therefore recommended that students should develop more interest in sitting for either of the two examinations since they produce equivalent results. Keywords: WAEC, NECO, Correlation Coefficient, Mathematics results, Performance 1. Introduction Every culture on earth has developed some mathematics. In some cases, this mathematics has spread from one culture to another. There is now a predominant international mathematics, and this mathematics has quite a history. It has its roots in ancient Egypt and Babylonia, and then grew rapidly in ancient Greece. Mathematics written in ancient Greek was translated into Arabic. About the same time, some mathematics of India was translated into Arabic. Later on, mathematics was translated into Latin and became the mathematics of Western Europe. Over a period of several hundreds of years, it became mathematics of the world (Joyce, 1998). This study presents the findings of a study of the relationship between students’ achievement in mathematics conducted by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and the one by the National Examination council (NECO), in selected secondary schools in Ifedayo Local Government Area of Osun State. It is a fundamental statement nowadays that we are in the age of science and technology and Nigeria has also imbibed the idea. The school curricula thus lay emphasis on science subjects of which mathematics takes a higher rank. Hence, it is one of the core subjects in both primary and secondary schools in the nation. (Amini, 1997) The West African Examination Council (WAEC) for a number of decades has been the only