Student Performance Analysis

Objective

This project analyzes factors influencing student performance using a dataset sourced from Kaggle. The goal is to identify key determinants of academic success and suggest interventions to enhance student outcomes.

Data

The dataset contains information on 2392 students, including:

• Demographic factors: Age, gender, ethnicity, parental education
• Academic performance: Study time, absences, final grade
• Extracurricular activities: Tutoring, parental support, extracurricular participation, sports, music, volunteering

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

Our analysis revealed several key findings:

1. GPA Distribution:

   • Student GPA exhibits a right skew, indicating more students achieve higher GPAs.

   

2. Gender and GPA:

   • The average GPA for male students is slightly higher than for females (1.92 vs. 1.89).

3. Parental Education and GPA:

   • Students with parents having a "High School" education level have the highest average GPA (1.94).
   • There's a weak negative correlation between higher parental education and GPA.
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4. Absences and GPA:

   • A strong negative correlation (-0.919) exists between absences and GPA, indicating a significant decrease in GPA with more absences.
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5. Study Time Distribution:

   • Student study time tends to cluster around 3-5 hours weekly, with a larger portion dedicating less time and a smaller portion studying significantly longer.
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6. Study Time and GPA:

   • There's a weak positive correlation (0.179) between study time and GPA, suggesting a slight increase in GPA with more study time.

Key Insights

• Parental Education and Weekly Study Time: Strong predictors of student success.
• Absences: Have the most significant negative impact on academic performance.

Recommendations

Based on these findings, we recommend:

1. Support Programs for Students with Low Parental Education Backgrounds:

   • Implementing academic and mentoring support programs to help bridge the educational gap.

2. Strategies to Improve Attendance:

   • Developing policies and interventions to reduce student absences, given their strong negative impact on GPA.

3. Encouraging Increased Study Time:

   • Offering resources and programs to support and encourage students to increase their study time, particularly for those studying less than 3 hours weekly.

Future Work

This project serves as a starting point for further investigation into student performance factors. Future work could involve building predictive models or analyzing additional datasets to gain deeper insights.