A thesis submetted in partial fufilment of the requirements for the award of the degre "Licencié en Pédagogie, Agrégé de l'Enseignement Secondaire en Anglais"

The researcher's aim while carring out this study entitled " A comparative study of students' English performance at the state examination : case study of selected public and private schools in bujumbura Municipality " was to assess the performance of public and private school students in english at state examination. This atudy was conducted in five (5) public schools and five (5) private schools located in Bujumbura Minicipality ; and selected for organizing Arts, Science B and/or Eonomics sections with final-year studnts sitting for the State Examination. To get relevant information, the researcher collected data using a written questionnaire he distributed to total sample of 10 teachers and 196 student from the selected schools, and 3 members of the Board of Examiners. The questions intended to find answers to the following questions : do students in public schools perform better in English State Examination than the private Schools?, Daes the students' attitude toward English influence their performanceat the State Examination? Daes the teacher's qualification play a key role in the students' English performance at the State Examination?, do teaching materials and testing and testng techniques used in daily classroom work influence the students' performance in English State Examination? The researcher dealt with four hypotheses : public schools generally perform better than private schools; there is a relationship between the positive students' attitude towards English and their performance in that language; there is no realtionship between teaching materials, testing techniques used daily classroom work influence the students' performance in English Examination?, and the students' performance in English State Examination; there is a relationship between teaching material, testing techniques students' performance in English Stae Examination. This work came out with several findings among which the major are : Most publiic schools and some private schools perform better in the English Staes Examination, Techers of public and private schools are degree holders qualified to teach English in secondary schools, 70% of the teachers indicate that students have a positive attitude towards English, the testing techniques used by English Stae Examination designers are multiple choice, sentence comprehension and gap-filling contrrily to teachers who use the WH-Question technique to design questions while evaluating students. Also, public and private schools are short of teachin and learnig materials. finallly, some recommendations were addressed to different partners of education who could help to maintain educational standards and improve stdents' performance in English Stae Examination.