ABSTRACT
This study investigated school variables and students’ academic performance in chemistry in secondary schools in Ini Local Government Area. The population of the study consisted all SS2 students from the public secondary schools in the study area. The sample size was 300 students randomly selected from 5 public secondary schools randomly sampled from the area. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire title “school variables and academic Performance of students (SVAPSQ).” The data collected were analyzed using independent t-test statistic. And testing the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significant. It was found out that students in a smaller class performed better than those in a larger class. Also, students using well equipped laboratories performed better than those using poorly equipped laboratory. The study recommended among others that government should provide more schools as much as possible to help in decongesting the overcrowded schools. Also the government should provide schools with a well equipped laboratories as science education cannot be properly taught and learnt without these facilities.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The school is a social and learning agent that provides the environment upon which a child may be formally educated in order to attain educational goals. Human beings, have unlimited capacity to learn but may however be limited by the behaviour patterns and facilities that the immediate environment offers.
According to Umoh (2006), nature only provides the raw materials in form of potentials, but it is the environment that determines the extent of development. In furtherance to the menace of law academic performance which had been on the high strain in the Nigerian academic system and cannot be over emphasized as it had eaten deep into the quality of students and eventual leaders produced into the Nigerian economy. It could be deduced that there exist a vacuum in the quality of individual for various institutional need of the country.
In assessing the cause effect of the level of student academic performance the study consider some variables of the school as those instruments that could tailor the level of students academic performance. The school variables which include class size, school type, school structure, school size and infrastructures present in the school is deem fit to affect students academic performance. Therefore, the school variables remain an important area that should be studied and well managed to enhance students academic performance.
The issue of poor academic performance of students in Nigeria has been of much concern to the government, parents, teachers and even students themselves.
The quality of education not only depends on the teachers as reflected in the performance of their, duties, but also in the effective co-ordinator of the school variables.
It is believed that the school physicals features has a form of a relationship with the student’s academic performance in terms of the school; size, class size, school type, school structure and infrastructures in the school.
A school with a highly populated students may result in the teachers not been able to monitor the performance of the students and thus reducing the students’ academic performance and also research has postulated a form of severe relationship between the school and the students’ academic performance. Also, the availability of educational resources at the disposal of the students in terms of school variables affects their level of academic performance. To complement these studies, the present research would be to examine the important areas of school variables as it affect students academic performance in chemistry in secondary schools in Ini Local Government Area.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Academic performance which is measured by the examination result is one of the major goals of a school. Hoyle (2006) argued that schools are established with the aim of impacting knowledge and skills to those who go through them and behind all these is the idea of enhancing good academic performance. The poor academic performance of students in the past in chemistry has given a cause for concern to academic and educational stakeholders. The school variables such as school size, school, type, school structure can affect the academic performance of the student in chemistry. Therefore, its necessary to investigate the composition of school variables and their effect on students academic performance in chemistry in Ini Local Government Area.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of the study was to determine the school variables and students academic performance in chemistry in Ini Local Government Area. Specifically, the study sought to determine:-
1) The difference in academic performance of students in a large class size and their counterpart in a small class size.
2) The difference in academic performance of students in schools with a well equipped laboratories and their counter part from schools without a well equipped laboratories in chemistry.
