RESOURCE AVAILABILITY AND ITS UTILIZATION AS CORRELATES TO STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS A CASE STUDY OF OGBOMOSO NORTH LGA, OYO STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

So far, we have seen education is an extremely important and necessary tool for personal and social growth and enhancement. Countries, families, individuals all around the world see education as a good investment for national growth. This is because it is required to yield the required quantity and quality of human resources for the economic growth using the right mixture of inputs. Coming down to Nigerians, we expect school system to be very active and productive in a way that a given good results is gotten with less input but based on observations of schools, operation in Nigeria shows that there are rudiments of unproductively in the school system. A good number of the students were failing and repeating classes while some dropped out and the increase in the fail out percentage in schools; therefore, contributed to wastage. This experience in the system shows that the aim of education in Nigeria have not been completely attained because students’ need to achieve and move to the next level of their lives. Educational managers of schools are faced with the problem of how to convince the respective stakeholders of education of how capable they are in active utilization of resources allocated to their schools. Thus, the poor performance of students in public examinations, tests, together with unproductive usage of resources, heap on the issue of standard when compared with what is obtainable in schools in Nigeria and beyond. it is embraced all over the world that education is one of the leading tools for encouraging, fostering economic growth as it includes some procedures individuals go through to assist them nurture, grow and utilize their potentials. Manifestations of quality education have to do with the ability to read and write performance and progression to higher levels of learning.

Howbeit, quality education will never be attained without the necessary educational resources which play a major role in the attainment of educational objectives and goals. Educational resources can be sectioned into four groups; they include human, material, physical and financial resources. Educational resources according are key to the education because they play a major role and serve as a ladder to climb the goals of education. The availability of the needed educational resources contribute to academic achievement, while unattractive school buildings, crowded classrooms, non-availability of playing grounds and surroundings that have no aesthetic beauty can to a great extent contribute to poor academic achievement. Therefore, there is a good relationship between educational resources and good performance. Therefore, students in schools with more resources are prone to perform better than students in schools that are less endowed.

Utilization of resources in every institution is as paramount as the attainment of goals and objective. Students learning result is not likely to be known or seen without using the appropriate resources actively and correctly. Student learning result could be seen to be completely changed in the behaviour of the learner. Learning is what students do; therefore, it needs student’s direct and active participation. Learning is an altered disposition in an individual as a result of instruction; it is dierence from motivation, development and needs. Based on the definitions above, it could be seen that Vocational and Technical Education encourages individual students to learn by completely participating in critical thinking and participating actively in a given task. The shortage of instructional resources hinders active utilization of resources. This is supported by Zare2002.

However, it has also been discovered that schools with good, complete, required resources may not always utilize them efficiently, effectively and as a result, fail to raise student’s level of performance. On the other hand schools with limited resources may utilize the little they have efficiently and this may boost learning, therefore students should be able to maximize and utilize resources available to them so as to adequately attain educational goals. Utilization of available resources is more paramount than the quantity. Thus, it is not making resources available to schools that is the most important, but getting those resources utilized by teachers and students to get academic content learned.

STATEMENT OF THE GENERAL PROBLEM

The national policy on Education (1998:l3) stipulated certain goals for secondary education. Some of those goals are; (1) To provide all primary school leavers with the opportunity for education of a higher level, irrespective of sex, social status, religious or ethnic back ground. (2) To oer diversified curriculum to cater for the differences in talents, opportunities and future roles. In Nigeria for example, majority of the students in public secondary schools perform poorly in West African school certificate examinations. This situation makes it impossible for the attainment of the above goals of national policy. For instance, there are many secondary school dropouts today who can never enter into any tertiary institutions or fit anywhere in the society. In addition, tertiary institutions set up preliminary programmes to enable the poorly performed students gain admission. All the above problems are as a result of poor performance of students, which appears deep rooted in inadequacy and or lack of facilities inherent in the secondary schools today.

Turaki (2001: 41) in Guardian at the opening of the 44’h annual congress of the All Nigerian conference of principals of secondary schools (ANCOPSS) in Sokoto said that “acute shortage of teachers in the nation’s secondary schools has been adduced as one of the reasons for the poor performance of students in the final examination”. Oladesu and Olanrewaju (2001:23) in Comet newspaper, in support of the above view, stated that poor facilities, inadequate staffing and under funding in secondary schools have remained insurmountable threat’s to education in the country. Sequel to the above assertion, it therefore, pre supposes that inadequacy and or lack of school facilities as well as poor utilization of available facilities must never be overlooked. The problem of this study therefore, was to determine the relationship between school facilities and students academic performance in secondary schools.