CAUSES AND EFFECT OF MASS FAILURE IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION JSSCE

ABSTRACT

There has been a problem for some years now, student’s poor academic performance in junior secondary school certificate examination. It is always on the increase, in the light of this significant problem that this study is based to find out the causes and eect of mass failure in junior secondary certificate examination(JSSCE) in Awka education zone of Anambra state, how ever the centre of interest is on junior mathematics examination. In the process of the study,( 5) research questions were formulated and tested, to validate these research questions (10) schools was randomly selected from the entire population.

Research instrument in form of questionnaire was administered to the area involved in the study. On the whole (250) research questionnaires were sampled to the respondents which include students and their teachers while (200) respondents were collected. Based on the findings of this study some recommendation were made as follows, government and other stake holders in education should provide adequate facilities and conducive environment to enable teachers function effectively, and teachers on there part ,must assume positive professional attitude, and show more willingness, more moral maturity and more commitment in the conduct of their professional duties. Government should employ more qualified teachers and those with qualification low than (NCE) should be sponsored for in- service training and distance education programme. Conclusion more effort should be made to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in junior secondary schools for positive change in student performances.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND OF STUDY.

For Nigeria to realize her dream in the development of junior secondary school, the citizen of the country must show outstanding performance in all secondary school subjects .In recent years, student academic achievement in junior secondary school certificate examination has been on the decline. Poor performance among junior secondary school students who are the focus of this study, has been attributed to two board factors which includes hereditary and environmental factors can be subdivided into students, home, teachers, and school factors (Nwankwo, 2001) .Ojunleye B. (2009) reports that one of the major causes of academic failure by students is deeply rooted in ineffective study techniques. She further observed that effective study habits do not just happen, rather they are acquired and have to be processed to make them firmly established in students to became a style of intellectual functioning .

Onyejiaku in iyalla(2001) strongly feels that there are certain underlying techniques which every student who wants to excel in academic most recognize, realize, internalize and practice .Academic performance basically devoted a student attainment in a learning situation .The academic performance of a student may be high average, good, poor, or low. Bal care (1986) outlined many factors, personality factors like anxiety, level of aspiration, motivation to learn, self concept need for achievement, emotional problems and study habit .Teaching and learning of junior subjects requires classroom teaching, laboratory investigation and field practices for effective acquisition of the skills. However, most junior secondary schools lack not only qualified teachers but also teaching materials for practical.

Effective teaching in junior secondary schools depends on the way the teachers impact knowledge to the students frequent field practical, regular use of instructional material for teaching and learning .it has been discovered that if these methods have been used effectively it will result for proper acquisition skills in junior secondary subjects. The establishment of junior secondary school education by the state government in Awka zone Anambra state like any other states has the same aims and objective as the national policy specify that secondary education is the education receive after primary education and before the tertiary institution The junior secondary school certificate examination(JSSCE) is an external examination organized and conducted by the ministry of education, it is the only instrument that could evaluate the performance of both students and teachers at the end of junior secondary school career .The success or failure of the student in examination is a clear manifestation of the student academic activities during the course ,success or good performances determine a brighter future for the individual while failure is disastrous as it always indicate ,a dropout which is the common effect in the area of this study.