Effects of poor academic achievement among junior secondary school students (VOLUME 1)

Education is essential for the development of society. The more educated the people of a society are, the more civilized and well disciplined the society might be. Academic achievement, especially among junior secondary school students remains a yardstick towards ascertaining the preparedness of students for transition into senior secondary education level. It therefore, refers to a student’s success in meeting his short or long term goals in education. It involves a student completing his junior secondary education or earning an O’ level certificate. In a given term, high academic achievement may mean that a student is in the honor roll. On the other hand, academic achievement refers to a person’s strong performance in a given academic area. A student who earns good grades or awards in science has achieved in the academic field of science unlike a student who earns low, if not a fail in the same field whom have not achieved in the field of science. Education associations and schools in the education system monitor the overall level of student’s academic achievement in order to decide what, if any, changes need to be made in the educational system. However, academic achievement means how much knowledge the individual has acquired from the school (Bashir & Mattoo, 2012). This implies that academic achievement is the outcome of the instruction provided to the children in schools which is determined by the grades or marks obtained by the students in the examination. It generally indicates the learning outcomes of students which require a series of planned and organized experiences.

Lots of studies have been done by researchers previously to examine and analyze the factors affecting academic achievement among students. No wonder Adeyemo (2001) opined that the major goal of the school is to work towards attaining academic excellence by students. According to him, school may have other peripheral objectives but emphasis is always placed on the achievement of sound scholarship. Besides, virtually everybody concerned with education places premium on academic achievement; excellent academic achievement of children is often the expectation of parents (Osiki, 2001). More so, it is obvious that not all students who engage in either continuous assessment or examination while in junior secondary level of education achieve success after graduation. The resultant effect, however, lands most students who achieved poorly into getting a half-way education.