CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

The academic performance in junior secondary schools in the country has been of great concern to parents, scholars, educators and the government at large. A number of seminars, conferences, symposia and workshop have been organized to look into the academic performance in sciences in the junior secondary as a take off into determining the relative academic performance of students in science subjects.

Some people are of the opinion that students’ performance in science subjects is on the decline. Conforming this view, Ezewu (1986) lament, only about 40 percent of Nigerian candidates who sat for the West Africa School Certificate Examination in the pervious years passed science subjects with credits. The impression from the forgoing citation is that the percentage of failure in science subject is on the increase. The fact that problems of education have reached on alarming stage should not be over emphasized. There is the belief that the standard of education has fallen.

Many Nigerians and Newspaper columnist have written and aired their view on this on this issue. Akinbanyi (1992) while working on the standard/quality in Nigeria education assets that the standard of Nigerian education has fallen. In recent years, it is a conventional claim which nobody in the right mind dares dispute.

In view of this, the researches are motivated to investigate the relative academic performance of the junior secondary in two science subjects (integrated Science and computer science) from the year 2004 to 2008 in Enugu North Local Government Area.