Fitness
to purpose: fitting the customer specifications, minimum-based fitness
for purpose and customer satisfaction. Value for money: through
efficiency and effectiveness. Transformative: education is an ongoing
process of transformation that includes empowerment and enhancement of
the customer.
Concept of Students’ Academic Performance
In
educational institutions, success is measured by academic performance,
or how well a student meets standards set out by the institution itself.
Performance is very important in human life and every society has its
own goals and aspiration. Students’ success or failure in the school
therefore presents a relatively defined criterion of performances.
Educational institutions are the areas in which all students are
compared to compete. Performance refers to the attainment of the
students in the classroom activities, as well as the extra curriculum
activities in the school. Campbell and Muijis (2004) defined performance
as the knowledge obtained and skills developed in the school, which is
often depicted by test scores, that is, the mark awarded by the teacher
to each student.
Nbina (2012) and Korau (2006) reported that
several factors have been advanced to affect student poor performance
which includes: student factors, teacher factors, school factors, family
backgroud and parental factor. Saage (2009) identified specific
variables such as poor primary school background in science, lack of
incentives for test, lack of interest on the part of student, students
not interested in hard work, incompetent teachers in the primary school,
large classes, fear of the subject psychologically.
On the other
hand, academic performance is the students’ accomplishment in terms of
grades obtained in a given test. Academic performance is often
determined by the individual scores in relation to a given standards or
sometimes in relation to the performance of other students in class test
or examinations. Poor academic performance of students has become the
trend in most examinations especially those conducted by the West
African Examination Council (WAEC). Over the years, results of various
examinations conducted by these bodies in the country have not brought
much to cheer for the parents and students due to the poor performance
recorded across board.
Observers are of the opinion that the
poor performance of students is not always attributed to lack of
knowledge and unqualified teachers but that some of the students find it
very difficult to sit down and study their books. Rather, they prefer
listening to music and browsing the internet that will not be of benefit
to them.
Academic performance really means three things: The
ability to study and remember facts, being able to study effectively and
see how facts fit together and form larger patterns of knowledge and
being able to think for yourself in relation to facts and thirdly being
able to communicate your knowledge verbally. According to Goldhaber
(2000), students’ academic performance varies according to individual
students’ scores such as high, average or low academic performance.
Students who place higher premium on education are activated to enhance
the development of their intellect and this foster academic performance.
However, in a success oriented society, academic performance is a
significant measure of success in life. The reasons for this cannot be
farfetched. It provides the singular index of intellectual ability and
aptitude for an individual. Goldhaber (2000) opined that, academic
performance serves as the only clear cut measure of student success and
adequacy for a life career. Similarly, Hardy& Smith (2006)
emphasized that high and low performance is when a learner does well or
poorly in a presented task. It may be said that obtaining scores in an
examination best describes what performance is all about. Oredein (2000)
stated that examinations are the most useful yard stick in assessing
students’ knowledge. She further stated that, when the result is good
or bad, it then serves as guide of deciding who get promoted to the next
class, demoted to a lower class, or who finally get what job after
graduation. This is a pointer to the fact that the issue of performance
to learners cannot be under-estimated.
OECD (2005) stated that
students’ performance is a measure of how well they have mastered the
learning task presented to them. It covers the way they handled
controversial issues and pass relevant judgment, and the level at which
they pass examinations.
Improving the student academic performance
depends heavily on the interplay of their full commitment and the
functioning of some of their personality constructs. Estrom (2000)
opined that success in school work or life appears to depend on how such
person feels about the qualities and abilities he possess or on those
qualities themselves. He further explained that when a student say, “I
will never understand this material†he is saying more about himself
than about the subject matter, it is likely that such student will not
cope essentially because he judges himself as not competent and capable
of being successful. Students’ academic performance also can be
determined by the input materials, such as the teaching aids, classroom,
library, laboratories and so on. If all these are well utilized and
adequately use, the academic performance of the student will be
meaningful and improved.
Martin, Yin &Mayall (2006) said that
secondary education in most countries experiences classroom congestions,
low student – classroom space and low classroom utilization rates as a
result of poor funding of education. These situations may likely affect
secondary school student academic performance adversely. Thus, the level
of students academic depends largely on the adequacy and well utilized
school facilities.
Teachers’ Qualification and Students’ Academic Performance
Darling
– Hammond (1998) defines well qualified teacher as one who was fully
certified and held the equivalent of a major in the field being taught.
Although the formal qualification of teachers is an important indicator
for their knowledge and competence in teaching, it has only limited
utility in analyzing how well prepared teachers are for what they have
to teach in schools. More detailed knowledge of the courses they have
taken during their training needs to be compared to the actual content
and skills required to teach the high school’s curriculum.
Ruthland
& Bremer (2002) refer to teacher qualification in two ways -
traditional and alternative qualification routes. Traditional
certification is when an individual completes an undergraduate degree or
post graduate program in education. Alternative routes of certification
are based on coursework in pedagogy and subject area without a degree
in education. Hardy & Smith (2006) cite short term activities such
as mentoring, peer evaluations and workshops as ways other than formal
qualifications for improving teaching. More often graduates teachers
with first degree content go into teaching if they cannot find another
job right away. Although they often get somewhat lower salary than a
fully qualified teacher; they choose not to enroll in the one year post-
graduate professional training and therefore lack a basic foundation
for teaching.
Huang & Moon (2009) documented that teacher
qualification accounted for approximately 40 to 60 percent of the
variance in average of students’ achievement in assessment. Richardson
(2008) revealed that students in urban areas performed better than those
in rural areas. The researcher suggests that the availability of enough
qualified teachers must have been a determinant for students’
performance. Maundu (2001) concluded that there was significant
correlation between teacher qualification and student performance. The
good performance was attributed to excellent instructions given by
qualified teachers in addition to other inputs.
