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 subject.

Some people are of the opinion that students performance in science subjects is on the decline. Conforming this view, Esezobar (1986) lament, only about No 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 the problems of education has 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 there view on this on this issue. Akinpelu (1984) 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.

These two science subject are selected to be the tae off into determining the relative academic performance of junior secondary students in science subjects.

This is because these two science subject occupy a curriculum. They represent the foundation stone for subsequent instruction in science in later life, for pupils who may wish to pursue a science related career in life and an introduction to science for others who may wish to pursue either humanities based on vocational inclined studies.

Integrated Science for instance is the study of all the branches of science which includes Biology, Chemistry and Physics under one Umbrella in order to avoid repetition of subject matter from various sciences. It is the root of all the science subject. Apan (1983) looking at integrated science said that “it is a natural response to the shifting views of science that the environment and all its natural phenomena can best be understand in the context of a unified scientific approach”. Also Khabele, (1975 said that ‘it is only an integrated approach in the study of science at early stage that will prepare a scientist for a proper tae off into the existing world of science later in his school career”.