CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

        With increasing population, the number of school going children is increasing much faster than the number of schools is increasing. The death of good schools and the greed of school authorities are filling up classrooms to the brim. Numbers of people complain about their children going to schools where children’s sit in classes where there is no place to keep chairs and tables.

Education plays a very important role in shaping the life of any citizen in his or her communities which he/she find him/her self. The school or learning to be environment must be conducive for learning to be effective, in other words, conducive environment assist students in their academics and pave way to learn. The classroom is the heart of any educational system. No curriculum planning is complete without implementation and evolution, both of which are mainly carried out in the classroom. Most of the class activities take place while students are seated. The sitting arrangement is therefore too important to suffer the kind of neglect being experienced by many secondary schools in the country. Overpopulation makes sitting arrangement in a classroom become so complex in the sense that the number of students will be greater than the seat available.

        A place, community or society is said to be over populated, when the resources or facilities available cannot cater for the residence of that place or society. In educational settings or school systems overpopulation can be referred to as a situation whereby the number of students pupils available in the school system is greater than the resources available in that school. These include infrastructural facilities i.e. building etc ICT and so on. Performance in education means learning outcome, it is seen as the capacity of a student based on defined criteria. Simply put, students performance means the output or achievement after learning. Educational planning in Nigeria has always been thought of in terms of quantitative growth, which is usually above the financial capacity of the government (Adesina, 2000). A recent example is the implementation of t he current 6-3-3-4 system of education, which is seriously affected by lack of adequate funding and poor preparation. Even though the federal and state governments have shown serious commitment to educational development through their annual budgetary allocation to education in recent years, the attention given to physical facilities is far from being adequate. Overpopulated classrooms present a problem not just to teachers, but also to students. Teachers face problems controlling a dozen students at times because of unruly behaviour and lots of talking.   

        These same teachers when presented with the homogenous task of controlling in excess of 30 students at once will get into a complete mess. It makes a simple task of taking attendance impossible. Especially teenagers who do not respond well to directions and rules. On the other hand, some students cannot concentrate because of other students. The number of failures increases in an overcrowded class because no students can concentrate on the subject at hand. This is leading to numerous problems in classrooms which are producing students with no interest in studies. Action by the government is necessary to reduce this problem and create an environment for education that pushes students to perform better. In Nigeria today, education is regarded as an instrument for excellence for affecting national development. Hence, a national policy on education has been adopted as the governments own way of achieving some parts of its national objectives. It is aimed that the secondary education should emphasized on the preparation of useful living within society sand the preparation of students for higher education (NPE, 1981, pp.  16), unfortunately, these aims may not be achieved if the present poor performance of the secondary school students persists. Overpopulation in classroom reduces teaching effectiveness, it will put more burden on the teacher, due to the fact that the teacher cannot devote much time on a particular students when the teachers are able to devote more time to each students, they can figure out the best way to solve each students problems in order to make then understand the lesson better, thus teaching is more effective.