CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION/ BACKGROUND

In every society of the world, irrespective of cultural differences and geographical demarcations, the need to socialize the young members of the society equip them with the knowledge, skills and attitude that empower them to contribute towards the realization of the society’s set goals is deemed prior.

In recognition of this fact, every society strives for institutionalization of socializing agents ranging form the families, churches, schools to many other legalized bodies designated with the responsibilities of ensuring the creation and maintenance of this dependable transformation of behaviour to a worthwhile type in the youths.

Of all the functional institutions of socialization the school is central. This is probably because it creates and controls the behaviors of other agents of socialization by selecting and impacting in them the designed and functional behaviour as dictated by the philosophical and cultural values of the society in question.

The above premises therefore lend credence to admit that every nations scientific and technological development, economic and political securities and actualization o general goals and objectives as well world recognition are heavily anchored on the nation’s formal education system.

Since the departure of the colonial masters, Nigeria in particular and other developing countries in general suffer relating, a significant shortfall in the standard of education when the academic achievements of their student are measured against expectations. Government in her attempts to address this issue has, through various National Curriculum Conferences and National Policies of Education (NPE), created, some educational system like: 6-3-3-4 system which was outcome of 1969 National Curriculum Conference followed by Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Basic Education (UBE/ Basic 9) all in quest to meet National goals through education (Fafuruwa 2004).

Primarily, these efforts were advanced towards reversing the selfish philosophy of education by the colonial hunters back to suit our indigenous needs.

To this end, detailed consideration of the professional competence of our teachers became less u effect leaning to contamination of teaching profession with a dominating number of unprofessional (quacks). Thus, while the efforts were on changing the philosophy of education and curriculum development for indigenous uses the axes of the educational institutions an systems were denied attention. Since this period to recent time, our school products 9graduates) have been characterized by poor academic achievement, insufficient scientific and technological know-how, lack of initiative, poor business attitude, poor professional skills and competences and so on which have formed a base for examination mal-practice, social ad political crime and retarded national development.

However, thanks to teachers Registration Council (TRC) of Nigeria, a body established by the Act no 31 of 1993 to among other things; register teachers growth, teachers, regulate and control the teaching profession, ensure ethical rejuvenation by enforcing rules and regulations guiding the teaching and learning as a profession, prescribe the standard of entry into the profession, show warning signals to intruders (quacks) into the profession etc.

Though the above observed educational problem can be attributed to so many other factors the study is walled to seek if any the impact of (TRCN) directives on academic achievement of the students by comparing the achievement score of students taught by professional teachers with the scores of those under unprofessional teachers to determine the influence of professionalism in teacher’s products (learning).