FACTORS RESPONSIBLE FOR POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1   Introduction

Various studies done on effect of school environment on academic performance attest to the fact that school environment that is not conducive for learning may lead to under performance (Chimombe, 2011). Provision of adequate learning facilities at all levels including equipment and human resources enhances the quality and relevance of imparted skills of learners (Lumuli, 2009). Learning involves interaction of students with the environment. Teaching and learning resources include classrooms, laboratories, libraries, playing fields, textbooks among others. Indeed physical resources go a long way in creating conducive environment that promote effective teaching and learning. It is with this in mind that the Draft Report on Cost and Financing of Education in Kenya that (RoK, 1995) identifies textbook ratio and school facilities as some yard sticks to be used to gauge the quality of secondary school education. Juma (2011) links performance in examinations to state of teaching and learning resources in schools. He notes that students from poor backgrounds perform poorly in the examinations because the poor are often in areas where schools are seriously deprived of vital facilities, an attitude of helplessness may be inculcated early into children making them feel that being in school is a waste of time.Physical materials in terms of adequacy and quality have been noted to have a great impact on performance of students in the examination (Husen, Saha, & Noonan, 1978). A school that has adequate instructional materials is likely to post better quality grades than a school which has poor quality physical resources. A school with inadequate classrooms will be forced to accommodate more students than recommended. This will exert a lot of pressure on resources such as teachers who may compromise their methodology as part of adaptive mechanism (Nafukho, 1991; Pscharapolous & Woodhall, 1985). The lack of basic facilities like laboratories has compromised the teaching of science subjects. Topics that are meant to be taught practically are taught theoretically as part of adaptive mechanism by teachers due to inadequate resources to enable effective teaching of the same. This ends up affecting negatively students’ performance reducing their competitiveness for opportunities whose placement is pegged on performance in such subjects (Mayama 2012; Lumuli, 2009). This study proposes to establish the state of physical facilities in public secondary school in Nigeria in order to evaluate how it is impacting on academic performance of public secondary schools.