RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL FACILITIES AND STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

The study attempted to investigate the relationship between school facilities and students performance in selected public secondary schools in Lagos State. In this study relevant related literature review was carried out under sub-headings. The research survey design was used in order to assess the opinions of the respondents with the use of the questionnaire and the sampling technique. A total of 200 respondents were sampled for the study. Two null hypotheses were formulated and tested in this study, the independent t-test for hypothesis one and three, while hypotheses was tested using the Pearson product moment coefficient statistical tool at 0.05 level of significance.

 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the study

Facility means the system which supports the operation of an organization or an institution to carry its daily activities and to promote growth and development in such organization or institution. Facility refers to the entire environment of the school or an organization, it refers to both the physical and material resources available to the students and teachers in the school to facilitate their learning and teaching process. The classrooms; the libraries and the laboratories for sciences are the three main areas of facilities identified in the school system or environment. (Onyeji, 1990) Yeloye (1990) states that in terms of the availability of the libraries as one of the school facilities, a great many of our secondary schools have no functional libraries, and where some libraries are found, there are no new or current books that are relevant to the current secondary school programmes. In effect there are no library facilities in most of the secondary schools in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State. The importance and uses of the library cannot be under-rated. Libraries and books give great assistance to both the teachers and the learners. In a situation whereby our secondary school students are left with no choice to make their text books as the only source of knowledge, the danger of exposing them to obsolete knowledge in old books donated by the British Council several years ago as one normally finds in the old secondary schools should not be overlooked.

According to Dada (1994), any one who is familiar with secondary school classrooms in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State, will agree that no meaningful teaching/learning activities can effectively take place in most of them, even if teachers are God-sent and the learners are celetial pack of highly intelligent personalities, the problem is that where there are classrooms, they are overcrowded to the extent that rooms originally meant for between 30 and 40 students, take between 60 and 80 students with a good number of them sitting on windows. In this situation, neither the teacher nor the students can move freely as expected in our secondary school classrooms. This is why many teachers do not give assignments to such large number of students regularly as expected. And this has affected students academic performance drastically. On science laboraories, Olarewaju (1994) claims that only few schools have science laboratories which are well equipped to carry out scientific experiments in courses such as biology, physics, and chemistry. A good number of schools teach biology or chemistry as if they are non-science subjects without laboratory. Some other schools which are so during, teach the three branches of science without laboratories in the hope that they would use other schools, laboratories during their examinations or compel students to contribute money for purchase of science equipment through the school Parents Teachers Association (PTA). It should be noted that the greater failure rate is in science because our schools lack the essential science to the students but rather, resort to the theoretical science without the use of laboratory. The contention is that the nation has been unfair not only to students in our secondary schools but also to herself. This s because no nation can develop technology through theoretical teaching of science subjects, under poor educational facilities, no meaningful teaching and learning can take place, and the normal refrain in the educational circle is that all is well with our secondary schools.

• STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The importance of school facilities or amenities in the development and growth of the educational sector cannot be overemphasized. Many schools in Nigeria today do not have certain school facilities that can make the teaching and learning to be easier and enjoyable to both the teachers and the students. Often times, there has been a constant outcry of the inadequate provision or non-provision of the school facilities, especially, the laboratories, the classrooms (buildings) and the libraries which are the main school facilities that aid teaching and learning process, for example due to lack of necessary equipment in the school, teachers in the science fields find it difficult to experiment and carryout practical teaching in the school, and the resultant effect is that most science students fail their science related subjects in the external and internal examinations Due to lack of provision of libraries, and sufficient classrooms in the school, year after year, the academic performance of students both in arts and science courses continued to go down. This is because the teachers are not able to utilize the instructional materials to present their teaching thoroughly for the better understanding by the students. In fact the inadequate provision or the non-availability of school facilities in our secondary schools is what prompted the investigation of this study.