INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PUPILS IN PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN NKANU EAST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF ENUGU STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Education in the largest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

Research findings have proven that there are many factors that affect the teaching and learning process of the child. These findings have created a lot of doubt among scholars as weather the school environment can influence the learning process of the child. To understand this finding, it is important to define what school environment means.

Orji (2016) defined school environment as all the human and non-human materials that help in the teaching and learning process, e.g. the human resources, the instructional materials, the school facilities, etc. contribute seriously in the teaching and learning process of the child. the quality of human resources a school has can affect positively or negatively in the teaching and learning process of the child. the quality of the school facilities available contribute to the quality of the teaching and learning of the school system. The content of instructions given by the teachers can improve the academic development of the child.

In the primary school, which is the foundation of the child’s educational development has some challenges, which involves the influence of the school environment on the pupils.

According to Bosah (2017), the primary school system of education is confronted with some problems relating to the influence of school environment on the academic development of pupils. He stated clearly that school environment plays major role on the academic development of the child.

The foundation of education, which is the primary school in Nkanu East has been confronted with series of school environmental challenges that has affected the smooth-running of the programme.

In the course of this research, we will access the extent at which the school environment as influenced the academic development of the pupils, the extent of the school environment and the aspect in which the school environment has influenced the academic development of the pupils. What are the effects of poor school environment poor school environment on the academic development of pupils and ways to improve school environment, etc. The above research questions will guide the researcher to do justice to the influence of school environment on the academic development of the child in Nkanu East Local Government Area.

Statement of the Problem

A child’s school environment involves all the school plant or facilities that aid the child to learn comfortably. But the story is different in Nkanu East Local Government Area where some of the school plant or facilities are rarely available. These facilities include school buildings, furniture, chalkboard, electricity, office equipment, staff offices, computer centres, canteen, fields and other sporting facilities. The above mentioned items are lacking in some of the school in their Local Government Area. The students sometimes study under the leaking roof, some study outside the classrooms, some classrooms carry more capacity than they should. For any effective learning and study to take lace, the instructional materials or teaching aids must be made available. Some schools do not have good security network for the safety of the students and the school’s property. The absence of the above facilities like school laboratory has hampered teaching and learning. Students don’t have access to good books, practicals are not carried out, students struggle with the rain and sunshine in the course of their studies. These acts have disturbed the learning and studying processes of the school. The computer system and other technological devices that are used in the schools. This has affected the students’ score in both internal and external examinations.

Therefore, the school plant are fundamental materials that must be put aright of effective teaching and learning.

It is against this backdrop that the researcher wants to examine how the school environment influence the academic performance in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose is to investigate the influence of the school environment on the academic performance of the primary school pupils in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State.

Specifically, the researcher will examine: