A CORRELATION OF STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN BIOLOGY AND THE QUALITY OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN IFO LOCAL GOVERNMENT, AREA, OGUN STATE

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

There is no gain saying about the fact that Biology occupies a very sensitive position in medical science and related disciplines. This informs several efforts geared towards studying biology at a secondary level of education. It is however, very disheartening and heart breaking that despite the key role and much emphasis, being laid on Biology, students at secondary school level of education are still performing woefully in this subject and this has been an issue of great concern to stakeholders in education, most especially those in the field of science. This has been attributed to myriad of factors such as poor parenting, poor attitude of students towards their studies. Bassey (2005) opined that several problems are associated with conventional methods of teaching. This indirectly results to poor performance of students. Bassey (2005) attributed this syndrome in educational sector to lack of perceived competence among the learners.

However, Adegbite (2000) and Olaleye (1985) views on the causes of poor performance diers. They posited very strongly that wrong location of market place, highway, airport, industrial areas constitute an academic unfriendly environment for learners. Agusibo (2008) asserted that many schools lack the necessary facilities for teaching generally. She however opines that theoretical aspect of teaching alone will not make learners know the rudimentary fact of most science subjects, particularly Biology. She therefore made a clarion call to all the key players, international organizations like United State Agency for international development, United Nation International Children Education Fund to render in valuable services by rescuing most schools by making available qualified teachers of Biology and making available supportive services for teaching of Biology and other science subjects.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The roles of the teachers in students’ performance cannot be over-emphasized. The progressive decline in secondary school students’ academic performance has raised a lot of questions as regards Nigeria’s educational system, of which the qualities of teachers are a key factor. Agusibo (2008), however observing that the absence of qualified teachers to teach Biology do contribute significantly to the poor performance of students in Biology.

This seems to be corroborated by West African Examination Council (2009) report on Biology, most especially. It is an obvious and glaring fact that in most of the secondary schools in Nigeria, some teachers teaching this subject are not professionally qualified. The professional qualifications required of any teacher in Nigeria are NCE, BSc (Ed), B.Ed, or PGDE in cases where teachers are not professionally qualified. On general note, teachers without adequate educational background have been found to be ineffective in terms of instructional delivery competence. It is against this background; this study was carried out to ascertain the quality of Biology teachers as correlates to students’ performance in Biology of senior secondary schools in Ifo Local Government area of Ogun State.