AN APPRAISAL OF INFRASTRUCTURAL FACILITIES AND PERSONNEL FOR TEACHING PHYSICS IN SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Education is a means of acquiring knowledge, skills and learning new culture, especially in schools or colleges, to improve knowledge and develop skills. The ultimate purpose of education is to empower an individual to excel in a chosen field of endeavor or career, and to be able to positively impact his/her environment. On the contrary, the end results of the processes of education have failed to maintain a high degree of academic distinction and excellence amongst learners and recipients of education in institutions of learning as of these days. Reasons that may be responsible for the prevailing circumstances could be largely remote in nature, such as educational policies on student’s enrolment and admission. Nevertheless, strategies must be sorted and implemented to remedy the situation of poor academic performance in higher institutions. For last two decades, the government Ethiopia was highly working in both expansion of educational sectors in all levels and improving the quality of education in all disciplines.

Expansion will create new universities, establish three system support agencies, mount new courses, and triple enrolments. Reforms introduce increased institutional autonomy, curriculum revisions, new funding arrangements and student contributions by means of a graduate tax. However, as some of facts have been revealed in some hard sciences, like: physics, mathematics and chemistry, especially in physics, none of the graduates’ and students’ attitudes towards the subjects at all levels has been declining. Of lately, there has been a lot of concern by the general public about the teaching and learning of science in Nigerian secondary schools. Research has shown that large numbers of students seem to learn very little sciences in their secondary school days, learning tends to be by