CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

            The existentialist Nigeria education thought seeks to distinguish between the British idealism, which breaks an elicit society, and the America pragmatism which nature a nation on practical men. The Nigeria philosophy gave direction and energy to the national conference curriculum development sponsored by the Nigeria educational research council in 1969, that conference was a momentous landmark in the history of educational development in Nigeria.

            It was a prevailing practice in most of all institutions of learning and evaluation of the students performance in one final examination was in tenable fraught with psychological paradoxes and expensive in time and money, dangerous and frustrating.

            The performance at the school certificate, students in this country then were totally poor. This could be seen from the results of school certificate examination between 1974 and 1977. The percentage passes stand as follows;

June 1974-51%

June 1975-47.4%

June 1976- 43%

            The system of a final examination at the end of the year secondary school course by an external examining body as West Africa Examination council is unrealistic. Discouraging and destructive of potentials. This does not encourage the cultivation of study habit student fizzle away their variable period of four years, rise from their lethargy and stop in the fifth and face belatedly to the labour of completing tasks long postponed as the fathom of the final examination looms before them. For the leisure, the fear of failure at the end of gruesome five years compelled cramming, without ply, relaxation in the crucial final month.

            This situation breeds high casualty rates for students and teacher, the system breeds unsystematic and irregular application to duty and more, it breeds the tendency to dishonestly since the feeding is to ensure success at all cost and by all means fat or foul.

            The answer to this lies in continuous and cumulative assessment and evaluation. This spreads out evenly throughout the year and eliminates for the final onslaught. This rates out the central examining bodies and reduces the influence in a final examination.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

            With the national policy on education, it was of the opinion of the policy makers that, continuous assessment will form the overall and about 60% of all examination in primary and secondary school respective. And also there ill be an inclusion of training in the continuous assessment of pupils in programmes of pre-service teacher education in teacher training colleges and of in-services training in the national teachers institute as planned in handbooks on continuous assessment titled “teachers education”.

            The above opinion and assertion on continuous assessment are bedeviled by the following:

i.              the present test items in most primary and secondary schools cognitively biased on the determent of the effective and psychomotor domain.

ii.            that the task force on continuous assessment set up in 1978 appear dormant and ineffective.

iii.           Seventy percent of serving teachers are ignorant of what to do and how to do them.

iv.           The problem of comparability of standard appear elusive, the continuous assessment system came in the wake of the new national policy on education in 1977 and revised in 1981. One of the distinctive features of new policy on education is its emphasis on continuous assessments.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1.    Does the problem of implementation still affect the continuous assessment system?

2.    Do the text items in school cognitive biased?

3.    To what extent has the prominent give to the single final examination?

4.     to what extent is the need of training of teachers in the manipulation of the continuous assessment skills?

5.    Does the standard comparable or is it still alive?

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

          The purpose of this study is to assess the implementation of the national policy on education with specific reference to the continuous assessment in post primary school in Edo state.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 

          Since the promulgation not much research have been done in the area.

          The study attends to bridge the gap.

          The result of the investigation will be useful to formulators and implementers, since they will have a base line data in carrying out on improved quality formation and implementation strategy.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

          It is necessary to diligent this study because it is not possible to study a problem without limiting the scope.

          The area of coverage is restricted to three selected secondary schools in Ikpoba-Okha local government area of Edo state i.e (a) Niger College (b) Ugiomon Secondary School (c) Saint Maria Gorreti secondary school (d) Oguola secondary school (e) itohan girls grammar school.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

CAP: Cognitive, affective and psychomotor domain.

ASSESSMENT: to appraise, fix value on work e.g. children responses to question.

SYSTEM: group of things or part working together in a regular relation.

EVALUATION: ability to judge the value of materials, statement, novel, poem or price written materials.