₦airaland Forum

Whether we are adult learners or only beginning our journey through academia, we look for learning environments that are safe and positive. If we are going to optimize interaction among our learners, which can have tremendous effects on learning, all learners must feel that they can safely take those risks that are part of exploration and constructivism.

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Creating a positive classroom environment is an important aspect of effective teaching. By creating positive classroom environments, teachers are provided the opportunity for better classroom discipline and management. A positive classroom environment is essential in keeping behavior problems to a minimum. It also provides the students with an opportunity to think and behave in a positive manner. Positive classroom environments help to enhance, promote, and encourage students’ learning in all academic settings. The classroom environment can be defined in terms of the students’ and teachers’ shared perceptions in that environment. There are a number of ways in which teachers can create positive classroom environments. Some suggestions for creating a positive classroom environment includes: starting the year with high expectations, encouraging student involvement, making the classroom visually appealing, getting parents involved, and using effective praise and effective feedback.
It is essential for teachers to start the school year with high expectations in order to guarantee a positive classroom environment. The implementation of positive expectations should occur on the first day of school. By doing this, the students will gain a sense of ownership & responsibility for their actions. This implementation will encourage them to behave and act appropriately with an academically structured setting. Teachers should adhere to these expectations throughout the school year. Teachers must strictly adhere to the structured guidelines set forth at the onset of the school year. Failure to do so will undermine the process and students will revert to previous undesirable behaviors.
Smaller class sizes result in higher achievement among students who are economically disadvantaged. Smaller class sizes result in students with lower academic ability doing better. Class size might affect student attitudes more significantly than it affects achievement.
CLASS SIZE
Class size refers to the number of students in a given course or classroom, specifically either the number of students being taught by individual teachers in a course or classroom or the average number of students being taught by teachers in a school, district, or education system.
The increase in population in a school affects the class sizes, the performances of students become an issue. Class size refers to the number of students in a given course or classroom, specifically either the number of students being taught by individual teachers in a course or classroom or the average number of students being taught by teachers in a school or educational system. The term may also be the number of students participating in learning experience. Class size is almost an administrative decision over which teachers have little or no control. Class size refers to an educational tool that can be used to describe the average number of students per class in a school. There are large and small sizes in school. The smaller the class, the greater the likelihood is that a teacher will spend more time with individual pupils.
STUDENT LEARNING
Student learning is defined as the measurable skills, attitudes, and knowledge of the learner as a result of participation in an educational activity. A Student Learning Goal/Objective, when used in teacher evaluation, typically covers the entire course of instruction rather than a single unit, reflects high expectations for student learning or improvement and aims for mastery of content or skill development.
The importance of learning is that it helps the individual to acquire the necessary skills through learning and knowledge so that he can achieve his set goals. An important fact about learning is that it is a means to improve knowledge and gain skills that will help in reaching specific goals.
Student learning outcomes are the cornerstones of course design and assessment, and help students focus on what is important. Learning outcomes can also be considered an inclusive teaching practice as they can help clarify expectations for all students.
LEARNING IN A SMALL CLASS SIZE
It has been proven that students learn faster and perform better in smaller classes. A class size of fewer than 20 students often results in more individual attention, increased participation, and better communication between the instructor and students. Students not only receive more feedback from their peers and instructors, they also tend to encounter more opportunities for hands-on learning than those in large classes. Unlike large classes, coursework
in a smaller classroom setting can be adapted to fit the needs of the students. Instructors are able to get to know a small group of students faster and tailor their approach according to the learning styles of the group. This customized curriculum prevents students from having to learn about a topic they have already mastered, allowing them to move on to the next subject.
There is more incentive for students to pay attention and become involved in a small class, because it is obvious when they don’t. Since students feel more motivated to participate in a small class, they tend to get more out of it. Students are able to share their ideas and ask questions about topics they don’t understand.
More feedback from instructors results in a better, more effective learning experience. Students in smaller classes benefit from a more thorough assessment of their work. Faculty tends to have more time to devote to reading their students’ assignments and providing feedback.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, if we are to really make a difference for our learners, we must help create the optimal conditions for learning to occur. This optimization includes establishing the framework in which learning will reside. A teacher has the ability to create the best or the worst memories of learning, and shape the direction that the learner may take as they take on formal and informal learning opportunities. A final thought includes remembering that patience is needed in a positive, safe learning environment. Just as each of us hold memories of good and negative learning environments, some of your learners come into your setting feeling this chip. Understand that some may be on the defense because of past encounters with negativism, but it does not take long to win them over so long as you can show them that their input and experiences are important. Modeling the positive behaviors and communications is contagious and will expedite the process, but understand that this will need to be ongoing if we are to change the culture that may exist. Let’s get it right and play it safe from the beginning.

Reading plays a central role in our educational, working, recreational, and social lives. The ability to read is highly valued and important for social and economic advancement. Reading is the most important skill among the four language skills as it can improve the overall language proficiency. Even though one may have reading difficulties in his or her mother tongue, the problems get worse when reading is applied to a second language, as students might be lagging behind in a number of reading components, including accuracy, comprehension, and speed. Lagging behind is a cognitive difficulty associated with the process of reading in another language. In other words, these difficulties are more likely to be associated with the nature of the language pragma linguistic or even socio-cultural aspects.

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Comprehension is considered as the essence of reading as it accounts for the process that supports effective extraction of meaning from a written passage. Modern literacy standards require that the students can self-modify, self-manage and self-monitor as a means to become strategic readers who can select information from the text, develop rational and incorporate critical reflection on the text while reading. In this instance, the students are required to be provided with an extensive range of reading and writing activities that include effective reading comprehension techniques.
The practice of effective reading comprehension techniques is essential to enhance the extent of comprehension among students and thus, language instructors are required to implement adequate reading strategies to improve comprehension and facilitate critical thinking in understanding complex texts. Reading comprehension is comprised of complicated factors; mainly comprising of cognitive, linguistic and socio-cultural variables, due to which the development of an effective reading strategy is difficult for language instructors.
Reading comprehension promotes interaction between students and reading material, due to which reading objectives in language courses are rejuvenated to develop good reading practices. Furthermore, language instructors accentuate collaborative reading practices to provide the students with an effective means to engage in their social environment while developing their comprehension skills. The adequate social environment that can improve reading comprehension is comprised of literature circles, group discussions, reading apprenticeship, book clubs and author analyses. These activities result in stimulating an interpretive discussion among the students and utilize critical reflection while reading and engaging with texts.
Similarly, engaging readers in shared inquiry on account of a discussion-based reading model results in effective stimulation of cognition among students as they engage in reflecting and thinking about questions in a complex text. It has been implied that reading engagement is an antecedent of developing attentiveness among the students which eventually results in high performance of students in reading comprehension. The context of engagement resides in keeping the readers cognitively and behaviourally active and thus, it is essential balance of interest, self-regulation, motivation, reading attitude and involvement with text should also be included in measuring readers’ engagement.
GROUP STUDY
Group study/learning are activities organized so that learning is dependent on the socially structured exchange of information between learners in groups and in which each learner is held accountable for his or her own learning and is motivated to increase the learning of others. The spirit within the team has to be one of positive interdependence, that is, a feeling that success for any one is tied directly to the success of others. To put it more concretely, a cooperative learning approach defines the class as heterogeneous groups; the class is organized in groups of four or six students in order to fulfil a learning task cooperatively. The learning task is based on interaction and reciprocal interdependence among the members of group and requires mutual help. In this educational approach, students in group reading are in a state of dynamic cooperation and together build up an intimate learning and social atmosphere both in the classroom and outside the classroom.
READING COMPREHENSION
Mastering reading skill requires interaction between the reader and the text. The reader has to decode the meaning of the written words to be able to understand the writer’s point of view. Therefore, reading is the most important activity in any language class, not only as a source of information and a pleasurable activity, but also as a means of consolidating and extending one’s which are knowledge of the language”. Readers have to use their prior knowledge while reading in order to construct meaning.
Reading comprehension is the process of eliciting and making meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. The process is a task of both reader and text factors that happen within a larger social context. Comprehension is also the process in which readers make meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the views of readers related to the text.
However, the purpose is to get an understanding of the text rather than to acquire meaning from individual words or sentences. The outcome of reading comprehension is the mental representation of a text meaning that is combined with the readers’ previous knowledge. This is called a mental model or a situation model. This model defines what has been learned. Therefore, reading comprehension needs the successful expansion and arrangement of a lot of lower-and higher-level processes and skills.
GROUP STUDY AND READING COMPREHENSION AMONG STUDENTS
Reading is the most important skill that must be mastered by students in terms of getting meaning from a series of written symbols. Reading can help readers in many aspects such as entertaining, educating, communicating, and informing readers about the past, the present, and the future as well. Reading opens minds and intelligence, and the goals of learners in catching the knowledge and ideas. Success in reading is measured by the ability to comprehend the text. Reading comprehension is a process of extracting and constructing meaning through dealings and complicity with written words or symbols.
Group reading instruction includes rich tasks which promote deep understanding; allows teachers to teach reading before and during the reading process, (not only after the reading process); and allows instructors to adjust teaching to meet the needs of all learners. In groups everyone is engaged and everyone has a voice. Students can sometimes learn more from each other than they can from the teacher. Also, this mode of instruction involves the social context of learning. The classroom is clearly a place where people have to work together, essentially requiring a compromise between their own individuality and the dynamics of the whole group. It is ideally a co-operative environment. The teacher generally demonstrates such strategies for students until the students are able to carry them out independently."Pair and group work immediately increase the amount of student talking time". The tasks in the classroom should be focused on Student Talking Time, which comprises discussion and interaction among students and interaction with the teacher.
Group work and pair work have become increasingly popular in teaching since they are seen to have many advantages such as enhancing students reading comprehension and improved academic performance. Group work is a cooperative activity: four students, perhaps with a topic, are doing a role-play or solving a problem. In groups, students tend to participate more equally, and they are also more able to experiment and use the language than they are in a whole-class arrangement.
Pair work has many of the same advantages. The moment students get into pairs and start working on a problem or talking about something, many more of them will be doing the activity than if the teacher was working with the whole class, where only one student talks at a time. Both pair work and group work give the students chances for greater independence. Because they are working together without the teacher controlling every move, they make some of their own learning decisions, they decide what language to use to complete a certain task, and they can work without the pressure of the whole class listening to what they are doing. With learners working in groups or pairs they learn how to read and speak effectively, how to work out what texts mean how to gather important information.
CONCLUSION
Students are not just passive receivers of information but they are active makers of meaning. Successful readers try to apply numerous skills to grasp meaning from the texts. Readers should be involved in the reading process by using different strategies to monitor their meaning.
Conclusively, it is possible to say that reading comprehension can be better understood by sharing, exchanging and socializing through group work/study. It makes the classroom student-centred and the teacher can get the experience of finest activity in the classroom. The learners become freer and they can explore and notice their own improvement within a friendly and fellow feeling environment among themselves.

Cognition is generally understood as the set of mental processes that occur between the reception of stimuli and the response thereto. Cognitive processes arise and undergo changes during the course of human development and its learning process, and that, Psychology intended to address them and understand them: origin, development and functionality. In order to define its functionality, the field of neuropsychology has focused on the study of cognitive processes, emphasizing the importance of the brain in human behaviour, and the relevance of certain cognitive processes and the functions derived from them in learning.

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Academic performance is defined as “the assessment issued by the school as a particular kind of educational evaluation specially characterized by the decisions that trigger its realization”. It is therefore a type of special educational control with academic effects. In general terms, academic performance is classified as high, medium or low. Occasionally, such rating is quantitative and is later classified as high, medium or low for the purpose of having a hierarchical categorization of analysis. However, the different motivations and strategies used by students when faced with learning activities have led to the identification of several types of learning approaches: deep and surface, strategic and achievement. There is evidence that academic performance depends on cognitive variables: intellectual ability and prior knowledge; cognitive variables: cognitive and learning styles; and affective variables: motivation and personality.
However, a fundamental goal of education is to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to think critically, solve complex problems, and succeed in the 21st century society and economy. Measurement of such knowledge and skills is essential to tracking students’ development and assessing the effectiveness of educational policies and practices.
Studies of cognitive development have focused on processing speed (PS), working memory (WM) capacity, and fluid reasoning (FR) as three inter-related cognitive abilities that develop markedly from childhood through adulthood and that predict individual differences in performance on numerous measures. Studies from late childhood through young adulthood indicate that gains in processing speed support gains in Working Memory capacity that, in turn, supports fluid reasoning.
These maturing mental abilities are thought to broadly underpin learning and cognitive skills. Variation in these measures predicts performance on a wide range of tasks among adults, including comprehension, following directions, vocabulary learning, problem solving, and note-taking. Critically, these cognitive abilities are associated with academic performance. Likewise, Working Memory skill correlates with math and reading ability among 5- and 6-year olds and among 11- and 12-year olds, and predicts mathematics and science achievement among adolescents. Thus, cognitive skills appear to promote or constrain learning in school.
COGNITION
Cognition is defined as 'the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. It is in essence, the ability to perceive and react, process and understand, store and retrieve information, make decisions and produce appropriate responses. It encompasses many aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and discover new knowledge.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Academic performance/achievement refers to performance outcomes in intellectual domains taught at school, college, and university. As an indicator of intellectual education, academic achievement is the most important prerequisite for individual and societal prosperity.
Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.
VARIATION IN LEVEL OF COGNITION AND STUDENTS PERFORMANCE
Academic performance is strongly associated with the latent variable labelled “cognitive ability” which captures most of the variation in the individual specific cognitive outcome measures. Working memory, visual spatial skills, and learning together stood out as the best combination to predict academic performance.
Cognitive abilities are aspects of mental functioning, such as memorizing and remembering; inhibiting and focusing attention; speed of information processing; and spatial and causal reasoning. Individual differences between people are measured by comparing scores on tests of these mental abilities.
Cognitive skills are a determining factor of an individual's learning ability. When cognitive skills are weak, learning becomes a struggle. Many children become frustrated and find schoolwork difficult because they do not have the cognitive skills required to process information properly.
Cognitive ability impacts on academic performance by Sustained, high-quality schooling and education, especially in the primary and secondary years, not only foster children's academic and cognitive development directly but also contribute indirectly to academic and cognitive development by facilitating cognitive-academic bi-directionality.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, cognitive skills are extremely important to develop during the early years of life as they help your brain think, read, learn, reason, pay attention and remember. These skills help process incoming information and distribute it to the appropriate areas of the brain.
Teach students to develop divided attention for multitasking. This will help in developing highly functional cognitive skills. Practicing mindfulness a few times a week for children helps in concentration. Processing speed is the time taken by the mind to process information or command.

ICT and the use of instructional materials improve teaching and learning and its importance for teachers in performing their role of creators of pedagogical environments. ICT and the use of instructional materials help a teacher to present his teaching attractively and able to learn for the learners at any level of educational programmes.
ICT in education improves engagement and knowledge retention: When ICT is integrated into lessons; students become more engaged in their work. This is because technology provides different opportunities to make it more fun and enjoyable in terms of teaching the same things in different ways.
ICT
Information Communication Technology (ICT) will mean all electronic system that has to do with information gathering, processing and disseminations. These include all forms of computer system (mainframe, mini, micropalm pilot etc.). Information technology is a technique and the equipment that facilitates the acquisition, recording, processing, storing, retrieval, transmitting and receiving information that has been processed using some electronic equipment and appropriate methods. Information Communication can be seen as the scientific, technological engineering and management techniques used in information handling and processing.

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The term Information Communication Technology originated from the coming together of three (3) technologies (micro electronics, computer and communications). Microelectronics are made from the reduction of electronic circuits on sting silicon chips so as to receive a small raw data and organize it into meaningful information. Computers are the major platform upon which Information Communication Technology stands on communication. The processes of telecommunication using telephone and telegraphic lines to send messages from one place to another, is the third aspect of Information Communication Technology. Computer is an electronic machine or a set of machines which accepts raw data presented to it in a specific format carries out some operations on the data and produces results in a specific format as information for:
i. Human decision making
ii. Signal to control some other machines or processes
iii. Further input into some other machines
A computer is any machine or device, under the control of a stored program, can accept data in a prescribed form, process the data and supply the results as information in a specific form. Computer comes from the word compute meaning calculate. It could be seen as a machine that performs arithmetic and logical operation quickly. They can store and process information and data and then made available to the users efficiently. With the general purpose of software, computer is no longer the domain of mathematicians, engineers and scientist. The name computer was later changed from computer to Information Technology (IT). Information technology is concerned with the handling and processing of information using electronic devices. It creates opportunity to handle, text and images, numbers and graphs, instruction, sound and music and to process information by organizing, storing and retrieving, sorting and analyzing, presenting and communicating. Computer can also be seen as an electronic machine operating under the control of instructions stored in its own memory that can accept data (input) manipulate the data according to specified rules (process) produce results (output), and store the results future use.
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
Instructional materials refer to those alternative channels of communication, which a classroom teacher can use to concretize a concept during teaching and learning process. Traditionally, classroom teachers have relied heavily on the 'talk-chalk' method during their teaching. But recently, instructional materials help to provide variations in the ways in which messages are sent across. In using instructional materials teachers and students do not only extend the range of sense organs we use but also extend the range of materials used for convening the same message through the same organ. For instance, in teaching a topic a teacher can manipulate real objects or use their stimulators. Instructional materials therefore constitute the media of exchange through which a message transaction is facilitated between a source and a receiver.
In addition to extending the range of materials that can be used to convey the same instructional message to learners’ instructional materials also facilitate the 'process' nature of communication. Infact it means that the receiver and the source share and exchange ideas, feelings in any communication.
Instructional materials are essential and significant tools needed for teaching and learning of school subjects to promote teachers ‘efficiency and improve students’ performance. They make learning more interesting, practical, realistic and appealing. They also enable both the teachers and students to participate actively and effectively in lesson sessions. They give room for acquisition of skills and knowledge and development of self- confidence and self- actualization. Teaching aids are those materials used for practical and demonstration in the class situation by students and teachers. Instructional materials are objects or devices that assist the teacher to present a lesson to the learners in a logical and manner. More so, instructional materials are visual and audio-visual aids, concrete or non-concrete, used by teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning activities. Therefore, effective teaching and learning requires a teacher to teach the students with instructional materials and use practical activities to make learning more vivid, logical, realistic and pragmatic. Instructional materials are however, indispensable to the effective teaching and learning activities. Teaching aids are always useful in supporting the sense organs. Despite the fact that instructional materials are essential tools that can make learning practical and knowledge acquisition easier.
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Academic achievement is often referred and debated in educational policies and discourses. Academic achievement as a deep and empirically tested knowledge about the factors that lay on the basis of school learning processes and which impact its development, but mainly about the learning processes difficulties”. Both national and international researchers talk about academic achievement but also about educational attainment, giving to these expressions different meanings. Academic achievement is often linked with successful student’s individual capacities and abilities and it can also be defined as the student’s school results, i.e., a student who being in the school system, public or private, with the convenient age, finishes a high school degree or equivalent, successfully, without neither interruptions nor failings”. Educational attainment is a wider concept when compared with academic achievement, as it also embraces other complex variables that are linked with the process of progressing through all schooling levels. Through a literature review, several factors contributing to academic achievement and educational attainment were identified. Collaborative work between qualified full time teacher librarians and curriculum teachers also impact students’ literacy, learning and problem solving. The work developed by school librarians could be an important predictor of students’ academic achievement and / or educational attainment as they can provide access to information, instruct students on information literacy competencies and build a stronger relationship with the whole educational community.
ICT, INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
International research shows that to improve student achievement, it is not enough for schools to provide access to icts; they must also provide real opportunities to use the technologies as well as adequate quality of access. Opportunities to use icts and instructional materials mean giving students a real chance to interact with the technology, which depends on multiple factors, including the number of Internet-enabled computers that are available to them. Quality of access has to do with the extent to which the available technology is easy to use and how fast and smoothly it operates. This is measured by indicators such as real Internet connection speeds and the ease of startup operations, data exchange and backups of personal data. Ensuring equity in the availability of icts and instructional materials are the basic conditions for reducing the gap in access, which is the first digital divide. Student use of icts and instructional materials not only depends on the available opportunities, but also on the type of activity that the new technologies are supporting in the school environment. Learning models that develop cognitive skills and allow for educationally relevant uses should be created and implemented. This leads to the second digital divide, which has to do not with differences in access but rather with differences in uses of icts and instructional materials and the ability to benefit from them. icts and instructional materials have been introduced in schools to transform teaching and learning processes and improve strategies for academic achievement.

There have been many discussions on reasons why students do not do well in school. With the rapidly changing educational environments in many countries in the world over, there is an opening for research exploring solutions to the challenge of enhancing student academic performance to getting a good education. Many variables play a role to students’ academic performance. Academic motivation is an important psychological construct for learning and academic performance in all the school subjects. Since it is unobservable, it can only be inferred from actions or verbalisation.

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The relationship between academic motivation and academic performance is still unclear and can only be determined with continued observation of the students. In this study the contribution of academic motivation towards school attendance and academic performance was explored. Although performance on standardized tests receives the greatest attention in discussions of students’ academic performance, teachers’ evaluations of performance as indicated in course grades represent a common metric of student performance that often is more directly tied to the day-to-day business of teaching and learning than are annual standardized test scores. Grades serve a number of important functions. They communicate to students and parents information about students’ mastery of course content. In high school, a passing grade is also the criterion for a course’s contributing to a favourable mean score. Finally, grades provide information for consideration in university or college admissions. However, as a measure of academic performance, teacher-given grades have well-known limitations. Grades are composite measures that account not only for students’ content mastery but often for other factors, such as their class participation, attitudes, progress over time, and attendance
AGE OF ENTRY OF STUDENTS
The age children should start school is one of the most common questions posed to education researchers. It is centred on the belief that there is an optimal school start age that maximises the probability of educational success by all or the majority of children and that the answer can be arrived at scientifically. Unfortunately, this is impossible. Firstly, school starting age has an effect on education in its interaction with the education system: curriculum, teaching organisation, qualifications and professional attitudes of teachers. It is quite possible that an optimal age in one system would prove to be non-optimal in another. Secondly, even with a defined education system, it would not be possible to determine the optimal age, as it would require long-term experiment in which samples of five-, six-, seven- and eight-year-old children chosen at random would start school. Such an experiment is impossible because it is difficult to imagine parental consent to accelerate or delay the school enrolment of their children in relation to the tradition of the country. The results would be adversely affected by awareness of children, parents and teachers being involved in an experiment and interactions of the independent variable with external events, e.g. discrimination of “delayed” pupils
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Students academic gain and learning performance is affected by numerous factor including gender, age, teaching faculty, students schooling, father/guardian social economic status, residential area of students, medium of instructions in schools, tuition trend, daily study hour and accommodation as hostelries or day scholar. Many researchers conducted detailed studies about the factors contributing student performance at different study levels. “the measurement of students previous educational outcomes are the most important indicators of students future achievement, this refers that as the higher previous appearance, better the student’s academic performance in future endeavours. Lot of studies have been conducted in the area of students achievement and these studies identify and analyze the number of factors that affect the academic performance of the student at school, college and even at university level. Their finding identify students’ effort, previous schooling, parent’s educational background, family income, self motivation of students, age of student, learning preferences and entry qualification of students as important factors that have effect on student’s academic performance in different setting.
The utility of these studies lies in the need to undertake corrective measures that improve the academic performance of graduate students. It is generally assumed that the students who showed better or higher performance in the starting classes of their studies also performed better in future academic years at degree level. Everyone can be surprised with this assumption if it could be proved scientifically. From the last two decades it has been noticed significantly that there is great addition in research literature and review material relating to indicators of academic achievement with much emphasis on this dialogue, whether traditional achievement measures of academic performance are best determinants of future academic gain at university or higher level or innovative measures
AGE OF ENTRY AND STUDENTS PERFORMANCE
In an overview of the historical data regarding school enrollment age and school success; the importance of chronological age are mixed. Many researchers have studied the possible relationship between school entry age and academic success. Student age can also be seen as a contributing factor to school success, comparing “early entrants to years of achievement”. The wisdom of enrolling students at an earlier age is very interesting, “despite the extra year of schooling, the early entrant is only three months superior in achievement to the regular entrant at a particular age”. There is a relationship between student age and academic success, “No matter what the entrance age limit may be, the children who enter [earliest] have more problems and achieve less than those of equal IQ who enter [later]”. Earlier is not always better. The possible benefits and drawbacks of enrolling students into school earlier than their peers is a win or loose situation. The practices of purposeful school delay, which can make an age appropriate student, seem young and immature by comparison. It works for some but might not work for some; there can be a situation where students whose parents purposefully delayed their entry into school, making them the oldest children among their classmates and again failed to find improved academic performance levels.

Guidance and Counseling is defined as, “a process of assisting individuals to understand themselves, their problems and their environment to make intelligent choices for the resolution of these problems by changing their behaviors accordingly”. Secondary school pupils are in the process of physical, social, emotional, and total personality development.

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The psychological purpose of counseling is to facilitate development. Students of secondary schools face academic, adjustment and behavioral problems during their learning. The first major problem faced by students is, selection of subjects. Many students choose their subjects on the will of their parents or teachers. There is no concept of aptitude test & personality tests at school level to check students’ interests and abilities for the selection of subjects. Due to this reason they face problems in their learning and later in their workplace. Also, there is a restriction of remaining in the respective field only for example a person chooses computer at secondary stage can never take biology in any later stage. The second most important concern is maladjustment. Students sometimes could not adjust themselves with the overall environment of the school because of poor social skills, inferiority complex, low grades in previous exams and lack of confidence. It is found that many students do not have previous knowledge of the subjects that is required for current level and due to unclear concepts, they feel maladjusted with the subjects and its teachers. Learning difficulties are also faced by many students due to content in curriculum. It is observed that students in Pakistan are provided superficial knowledge of many scientific theories. There is lacking in practical examples and activity work related to those theories and principles. Another reason is bullying among students. Bullies and victims of bullies both face psychological problems for long terms. It affects their learning process. Victims are often anxious, insecure, and cautious and have low self-esteem. They tend to be socially isolated and ultimately result in dropouts
GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING
The term guidance is used in so many different ways. The true significance of the work of guidance in the school is often overlooked. The chief aim and purpose of guidance is to help the child, youth or adult, to understand himself, his needs and his environments. “Guidance is helping the pupil to become adjusted to his present situation and to plan his future in line with his interests, abilities and social needs. Respect for the individual should be the basis of all guidance work. Guidance services are meant for all pupils at all stages. This work should be done prior to a child‘s entrance in to school and should continue throughout his school life. In some cases guidance services continue even after graduation.
The purpose of guidance has been “to assist the individual through counsel to make wide choices, adjustments and interpretations in connection with critical situation in his life in such a way as to insure continual growth in ability for self-direction.” Guidance is also described as counselling service to assist the individual in achieving self-direction and educational vocational and personal adjustment and to take positive steps in the light of new orientations.
Counselling is a personal face to face relationship between two people, in which counsellor by means of relationships and his special competencies, provides a learning situation in which the counselee, a normal sort of person is helped to know himself and his present and possible future situations so that he can make use of his characteristics and potentialities in a way that is both satisfying to himself and beneficial to society and further, can learn how to solve further problems and meet future needs. While guidance is the overall framework personal services within the school, counseling is only one particular service. The counsellor is the key figure in the guidance program but he performs many other duties besides counselling as he discharges his guidance responsibilities.
The two words guidance and counselling generally take on different meanings. The former refers to helping students’ whole-person development, while the latter is frequently targeted at helping students with problems. In other words, guidance work is preventive and developmental in nature whereas counselling is more of supportive, remedial work. The global trend seems to have moved from a casework and remedial approach to a preventive, developmental approach in providing guidance and counselling. Hence guidance and counselling is a very necessary therapy to school children. Guidance in schools is that area of the schools provision that is specifically directed towards helping pupils realize their full potential in preparing for adult and working life. guidance and counselling can also be seen as a process of helping an individual become fully aware of his/her self and the ways in which he is responding to the influences of his/her environment. It further assists him to establish some personal meaning for this behaviour and to develop and classify a set of goals and values for future behaviour.
THE NEED FOR GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING
The primary school age according to the Federal Ministry of Education Blueprint on Guidance and Counselling for Educational Institutions in Nigeria is between 6 and 12 years. This is an impressionable period and this runs into pre-adolescent stage during which a lot of developmental changes are taking place within the individual. The problems which are associated with these changes cannot be left unattended to till later date. This neglect may have a negative carryover effect on the concerned individuals. It is therefore the counselor who has been trained in the art of handling psychological problems that would be able to assess the degree of each child’s problems and suggest or seek remedy or solution. The child in the primary school especially in the first two years is battling over transition adjustment from home to school partly because he is faced with strange persons in the school. A situation, which if not properly managed can lead a child to become fearful and apprehensive. Maladjustment in a primary school child to his new environment may lead to truancy and the consequent social vices. The yawing gap occasioned by the absence of Guidance and counselling services at the primary school level needs to be closed to tackle children’s developmental and adjustment problems early in life. The main Guidance and counselling needs in the Nigeria primary schools include:
• Assist to identify developmental needs of pupils.
• Assist the pupils to identify himself as a developing individual.
• Effect a smooth transition from home to primary and secondary schools
•Encourage the pupil to cultivate right attitudes and values
•Help the pupil to identify and modify maladaptive behaviours.
•Encourage the pupil to develop along the area of his strength.
•Assist the pupil towards making decisions in his choice of work.
•Assist the pupil to identify and cope with any disabilities he may have.
It is very important to note that the orientation, role playing, group counselling, modeling, referral and follow-up services needed to achieve these set goals can only be carried out by a trained counselor in a conducive environment.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.
Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic achievement is important for the successful development of young people in society. Students who do well in school are better able to make the transition into adulthood and to achieve occupational and economic success.
EFFECTIVENESS OF GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING IN ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Guidance plays a constructive role in the solution of educational, personal, social, mental, emotional and Career or Vocational problems among secondary school students. Guidance and counseling have been conceptualized as a program of activities is the gateway out of the existing numerous problems in our present age of complex scientific and technological development. Secondary school students are faced with many educational problems. These problems include wrong selection of subjects, a lack of educational information, misbehavior, dropouts, gender stereotypes in the selection of subjects, poor study habits, difficulty in taking examinations and, most importantly, lacking someone to whom they can freely tell their concerns. Guidance and counseling program in a school is “a process of helping students to find the solution of their problems and accept them as their own”. Students of secondary schools are in the adolescent stage. This stage is characterized by physical, social, spiritual, moral, and intellectual change and swift growth that is why this program is needed in schools. This program improves students’ academic achievements, cater positive attitude towards learning and work. Counseling in school involves helping students individually or in small groups to deal with the fear or worries, they are experiencing. At school level, guidance and counseling assist in physique, friendship, relationship, with adults, vocational skills, and abilities. There should be a comprehensive guidance program in the schools. It assists pupils in academic, social acceptance, mental and physical health, friendship, relationship with peers, vocational skills, and personality traits. This will help students avoiding bad company, indulgence of alcohol, smoking, lying and other immoral activities. Guidance and counseling program can decrease the rate of juvenile delinquencies across the country by guiding children of adolescent age joining dangerous antisocial groups. It also helps to decrease dropouts of these children from school at an early age.

Entrepreneurship can be defined as a “new entry” (i.e., what entrepreneurship consists of), which could be achieved either by entering a new market or by venturing into previously established markets by means of existing or new goods or services, while the term entrepreneurial orientation (EO) could be defined as processing, practicing, and decision making actions that lead to such new entries.

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In any developing economy, the role of entrepreneurial activities in achieving sustainable economic growth and development cannot be over-emphasized. Entrepreneurship promotes rapid economic growth and also minimizes the rate of unemployment in any country. Entrepreneurship can be said to be any effort at producing new business such as self-employment, creating new business or the extension of existing business by an individual, or group of people. Entrepreneurship is as a result of complex balancing of prospect initiatives, risks and rewards. It can be viewed as a process by which individuals look for opportunities, enjoyable needs and wants through innovations, without regard to the resources they currently control. Through the practice of entrepreneurship, it is possible to maintain the scope of capital formation, job establishment and aid industrialization in a country. On the other hand, an entrepreneur is a person who hunts for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.
Therefore, Entrepreneurship has become an everyday buzzword. Policymakers, economists, academics and even university students are talking about it. Entrepreneurship has a significant role in the economic advancement and economic changes of all countries. Venture creation is, therefore, a play an important source of employment in many countries. Thus, entrepreneurship has an important position in the global fast changing socioeconomic environment. Entrepreneurship is the process of venture creation and entrepreneurship intention is crucial in this process. Entrepreneurship intention identifies the link between ideas and action which is critical for understanding the entrepreneurial process intention captures the degree to which people show their motivation and willingness to execute the desired behavior.
The field of entrepreneurship has been increasingly considered as a significant generator of economic growth, innovation and creation of jobs. Entrepreneurial carriers are becoming an area of more concerns by governments, students and the universities. Despite the fact, the creation of a new venture or entrepreneurship is regarded as a voluntary process with conscious intention. This implies that governments and universities must work together to support students in developing entrepreneurial career intentions through financial or entrepreneurial education. This issue happened due to the lack of opportunities available in competitive market and job environment with total job opportunities are unfortunately limited. Hence, entrepreneurship is the best alternative solutions to reduce dependency of graduates’ students on being employed.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values than simply economic ones.
An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.
In every society, entrepreneur is known to be a business front-runner and not just owner of capital. Such person is often driven with telescopic faculty, energy and ability that see business prospects and immediately explore them for opportunity.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ORIENTATION
Entrepreneurial orientation is a tendency of businesses to act autonomously and innovative, take risks and is taking proactive initiatives to potential market conditions. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is overall strategic posture toward entrepreneurship is emerging as a predominant concept in management science. As knowledge in the area of entrepreneurial orientation has expanded, researchers have become interested in issues related to the evolution, potential contributions, and future trajectory of entrepreneurial orientation research.
Entrepreneurial orientation is the willingness of a person to create new venture, and it involves methods, processes, practices and decision-making styles. Entrepreneurial orientation must be enhanced to facilitate the pace of entrepreneurship. There are three traits of entrepreneurial orientation; 1) Innovativeness: predisposition toward creative experimentations via breakthrough or novel operational methods. Pro-activeness: nimble movement seeking new opportunities in anticipation of future demand before competition arise, and lastly, Risk-taking: taking bold actions to attempt at new and unconventional avenue to uncertainty.
Entrepreneurial orientation can also be said to be a firm’s-level strategic orientation which captures an organization's strategy-making practices, managerial philosophies, and firm behaviors that are entrepreneurial in nature. The essence of entrepreneurial orientation depends on how entrepreneurs implement entrepreneurship in the course of realizing their career ambition. On the other hand, entrepreneurship focuses on new entry. New entry can be accomplished by entering either into new or established markets with new or existing goods or services.
Entrepreneurial orientation consists of five dimensions: (1) autonomy, (2) competitive aggressiveness, (3) innovativeness, (4) pro-activeness, and (5) risk taking.

THE NEED FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP ORIENTATION
Under the rapid change of economic circumstance, there is a great demand for promoting entrepreneurship of young people all around the world. Because of this reason, countries have devoted to introducing and enhancing entrepreneurship education for all university students as a part of general education or compulsory course, regardless of the major.
Entrepreneurship education is beneficial to students, because it helps them develop career pathway by instigating entrepreneurial motivation. Learning influences entrepreneurial orientation of new small and medium sized venture firms. Entrepreneurial orientation has occupied a core part of entrepreneurship together with the concept of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy stemmed from social cognitive theory which explains human behavior as a function of personal, behavioral and environmental determinants.
The significance of Entrepreneurship Orientation lies in its potential to help the firm’s top management to delineate the purpose of the organization, sustain firm’s vision and formulate a way to achieve competitive advantage over competitors. Entrepreneurship is a global phenomenon and is increasingly regarded as an important activity to business firms. The spread of globalization has created a competitive business environment, which has affected the way entrepreneurs create and sustain their business operations and strategy. Entrepreneurial orientation has therefore been seen as a key driving force for a free market economy.
Entrepreneurial orientation is the process by which people or organizations discover and exploit new business opportunities which exist within a market, revitalize existing businesses, or introduce new products or processes. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is considered the important concept for a firm’s strategy making. Entrepreneurial orientation EO refers to the decision making styles, practices, process and behaviors that leads to ‘entry’ into new or established markets with new or existing goods or services. It is used to explain the mind-set of firms involved in pursuing a new venture and provides a useful framework to investigate entrepreneurial activities and reflects how a firm operates rather than what it does.
CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, creating entrepreneurial graduates is in this way fundamental for our future achievement. Colleges and other advanced education foundations ought to be preferably put to open students to situations which cultivate entrepreneurial attitudes and the viability of the entrepreneurship programs are critical keys to deliver increasingly youthful business people in future. The program itself can teach our young age to be progressively beneficial in the wake of moving on from their examinations at college level. As opposed to getting to be unemployed, it is great to channel their inventiveness and vitality towards business which is currently turning into a profitable field in this world.

Academic performance/Achievement' is one of the signicant predictor in the lives of students. It's the outcome of education and it foretells the extent to which the students, teachers and educational institutions have attained their educational goals. Academic achievement is important because it promotes success later and in current life. Among the various influencing factors of academic achievement like socio-economic factors, parent factors, peer factors, school factors, for obtaining an optimal academic achievement, student's academic or learning behavior is an equally important factor in ascertaining the academic achievement of students. It includes student's outlook, choice, his/her persistence, his/her efforts in learning and how he/she relates to the people that make up the school community. Study skills are often determined by the student's learning behavior which affects their learning pattern.

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Learning Behavior is the mental readiness of the students to learn which indicates their resourcefulness, creative thinking and imaginative activities, love for their learning, high interest for reading and writing and also having better psychological adjustment in class and school. It depends upon the emotional and social climate of the home and school. Good schools make a contribution to develop such climate of learning. Among a variety of factors, such as teacher involvement, parental investment, school quality and student motivation affecting the academic life of students, it is student's academic behavior which plays a major role in academic achievement. It is highlighted that students having disruptive behavior such as bullying other students, talking during lectures or by requiring the teacher to interrupt lessons to discipline them can have a negative effect on entire classroom.
STUDENTS BEHAVIOUR
Students learn behaviours through the feedback and consequences they receive at home or school. Sometimes feedback or consequences unintentionally reinforce negative behaviours. For example, a teacher responds to a student who frequently calls out in class by giving him more attention, which is what he wants. A good behaviour is important because learning requires behavior that lets you fully participate in the lesson, and allow other students to do work as well. A good student is one that is prepared, active, safe, interacting, and helping.
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.
Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic achievement is important for the successful development of young people in society. Students who do well in school are better able to make the transition into adulthood and to achieve occupational and economic success.
STUDENTS BEHAVIOUR AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT NEXUS
Schooling is an intrinsically social enterprise. Student behavior is shaped by and exhibited and interpreted in a social context that involves multiple actors viz. teachers, students, school staff etc. It includes multiple settings like classrooms, corridors, common areas, laboratories, lunch room, and playground. Schools are institutions with multiple goals like enhancing academic performance, encouraging a holistic development of the student. Positive behavior is more likely to thrive when relationships at all levels are trusting and supportive and reflect a shared commitment to establish a healthy school and community. Problem behavior of students not only interrupts teacher’s lesson plans but also disturbs other student’s learning process as well as their academic performance. Such students test teacher’s patience as a result many feeling overwhelmed, helpless and make teaching as one of the most difficult aspects of a teacher's job. The most common problem behaviors in the classroom teachers notice are a student's lack of focus, and the inability to sit/stand for an appropria te length of time required for effectively learning.
If a student has a great relationship with reading and often chooses leisurely reading, then the student is likely going to score well on any assessment of screeners. “Adolescents’ reading skills play a crucial role in their educational success as most curriculum subjects use text-based materials for study”. If a child is a struggling reader, they are often less motivated to read independently. If the child is less likely to read independently, then they are more likely to continue to struggle. The low academic achievements will often lead to negative behaviors. If these habits continue and the child is not given opportunities to change at a younger age, then they are more likely to continue in this rut. Teacher motivation and early interventions are the ingredients for success for these students.
More so, Education system is rapidly changing where much of the attention currently given to improving students’ academic achievement addresses issues of curriculum, instructional strategies, and interventions or services for students. However, even after addressing these issues, barriers still remain for some students. Approaches aimed at improving school and classroom environments, including reducing the negative effects of disruptive or distracting behaviors, can enhance the chances that effective teaching and learning will occur, both for the students exhibiting problem behaviors and for their classmates. An estimated one-third of students fail to learn because of psychosocial problems that interfere with their ability to fully attend to and engage in instructional activities, prompting a call for new directions for addressing barriers to learning. Increased academic pressure in addition to lots of exposure to audio-visual media has changed the mind set of students alarmingly causing behavioral problems.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Student’s behavior reflects the interaction of their temperament and inherited personality, the history of their experiences, and the particular nature of each situation. In most circumstances it is impossible to determine what proportion each of these elements contributes to a given manifestation. It also differ in proportions which vary from student to student and even from situation to situation for a single student. Although it is difficult to modify personality of a student having problem behavior, it is possible to modify behavior by identifying and correcting adverse situations in the environment and by introducing appropriate interventions. If adverse environmental conditions are corrected at an early stage, there is a greater possibility of preventing or diminishing their impact on behavioral pattern of student in question.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) includes computers, the Internet, and electronic delivery systems such as radios, televisions, and projectors among others, and is widely used in today’s education field. School is an important environment in which students participate in a wide range of computer activities, while the home serves as a complementary site for regular engagement in a narrower set of computer activities. Increasingly, ICT is being applied successfully in instruction, learning, and assessment. ICT is considered a powerful tool for educational change and reform.

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However, learning is an ongoing lifelong activity where learners change their expectations by seeking knowledge, which departs from traditional approaches. As time goes by, they will have to expect and be willing to seek out new sources of knowledge. Skills in using ICT will be an indispensable prerequisite for these learners.
One important dimension in teacher education that is getting a lot of attention is related to the use of instructional materials. Instructional materials are those materials used by a teacher to simplify their teaching. They include both visual and audio-visual aids and could either be concrete or non-concrete. These instructional materials bring life to learning by stimulating students to learn. The use of instructional materials in the classroom has the potential to help the teacher explain new concepts clearly, resulting in better student understanding of the concepts being taught. However, they are not ends in themselves but they are means to an end. It is held that good teaching resources can never replace the teacher but the teacher uses them to achieve their teaching and learning objectives. Some of the instructional materials necessary for effective teaching and learning of Social Studies include the chalkboard, models, graphs, charts, maps, pictures, diagrams, cartoons, slides, filmstrips, radio, and television. The importance of the use of these materials cannot be underscored.
Therefore, ICT tends to expand access to education. Through ICT, learning can occur anytime and anywhere. Online course materials, for example, can be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Teleconferencing classrooms allow both learner and teacher to interact simultaneously with ease and convenience. Based on ICT, learning and teaching no longer depend exclusively on printed materials. Multiple resources are abundant on the Internet, and knowledge can be acquired through video clips, audio sounds, and visual presentation and so on. ICT assists in transforming a teaching environment into a learner-centered one. Since learners are actively involved in the learning processes in ICT classrooms, they are authorized by the teacher to make decisions, plans, and so forth. ICT therefore provides both learners and instructors with more educational affordances, instructional materials and possibilities.
ICT
Information and communications technology is an extensional term for information technology that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications and computers, as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage and audiovisual, that enable users to access, store, transmit, understand and manipulate information.
Information and communications technology (ICTs) is a broader term for Information Technology (IT), which refers to all communication technologies, including the internet, wireless networks, cell phones, computers, software, middleware, video-conferencing, social networking, and other media applications and services enabling users to access, retrieve, store, transmit, and manipulate information in a digital form.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is the mode of education that use information and communications technology to support, enhance, and optimize the delivery of information. Worldwide research has shown that ICT can lead to an improved student learning and better teaching methods.
ICT is also used to refer to the convergence of audiovisual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives to merge the telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution, and management. ICT is an umbrella term that includes any communication device, encompassing radio, television, cell phones, computer and network hardware, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and appliances with them such as video conferencing and distance learning. ICT also includes analog technology, such as paper communication, and any mode that transmits communication.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ICT
Some of the importance of the use of ict is as follows:
Assist students in accessing digital information efficiently and effectively
ICT is used as a tool for students to discover learning topics, solve problems, and provide solutions to the problems in the learning process. ICT makes knowledge acquisition more accessible, and concepts in learning areas are understood while engaging students in the application of ICT.
Support student-centered and self-directed learning
Students are now more frequently engaged in the meaningful use of computers. They build new knowledge through accessing, selecting, organizing, and interpreting information and data. Based on learning through ICT, students are more capable of using information and data from various sources, and critically assessing the quality of the learning materials.
Produce a creative learning environment
ICT develops students’ new understanding in their areas of learning. It also provides more creative solutions to different types of learning inquiries. For example, in a reading class, e-books are commonly used in reading aloud activities. Learners can access all types of texts from beginning to advanced levels with ease through computers, laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or iPads. More specifically, these e-books may come with some reading applications, which offer a reading-aloud interface, relevant vocabulary-building activities, games related to reading skills and vocabulary acquisition, and more. Therefore, ICT involves purpose designed applications that provide innovative ways to meet a variety of learning needs.
Promote collaborative learning in a distance-learning environment
The use of ICT enables students to communicate, share, and work collaboratively anywhere, any time. For instance, a teleconferencing classroom could invite students around the world to gather together simultaneously for a topic discussion. They may have the opportunity to analyze problems and explore ideas as well as to develop concepts. They may further evaluate ICT learning solutions. Students not only acquire knowledge together, but also share diverse learning experiences from one another in order to express themselves and reflect on their learning.
Improve teaching and learning quality
There are three important characteristics needed to develop good quality teaching and learning with ICT these are: autonomy, capability, and creativity. Autonomy means that students take control of their learning through their use of ICT. In this way, they become more capable of working by themselves and with others. Teachers can also authorize students to complete certain tasks with peers or in groups. Through collaborative learning with ICT, the students have more opportunity to build the new knowledge onto their background knowledge, and become more confident to take risks and learn from their mistakes.
ICT fosters autonomy by allowing educators to create their own material, thus providing more control over course content than is possible in a traditional classroom setting. With regard to capability, once students are more confident in learning processes, they can develop the capability to apply and transfer knowledge while using new technology with efficiency and effectiveness.
Therefore, the whole learning process enriches students’ learning skills and broadens their knowledge beyond what they already know. By using ICT, students’ creativity can be optimized. They may discover new multimedia tools and create materials in the styles readily available to them through games, CDs, and television. With a combination of students’ autonomy, capability, and creativity, the use of ICT can improve both teaching and learning quality.
Offer more opportunities to develop critical (higher-order) thinking skills
Based on a constructive learning approach, ICT helps students focus on higher-level concepts rather than less meaningful tasks. There were statistically significant correlations between studying with ICT and the acquisition of critical thinking skills. A longer exposure in the ICT environment can foster students’ higher critical thinking skills. Thus, schools are strongly advised to integrate technology across all of the learning areas and among all learning levels. Where this is done, students are able to apply technology to the attainment of higher levels of cognition within specific learning contexts.
Support teaching by facilitating access to course content
Teachers can act as catalysts for the integration of technology through ICT. If the encouragement, equipment, and necessary technological support are available from institutes for the teachers, developing an ICT class will be easier for them. The main responsibilities of these teachers will be changing their course format, creating and explaining the new assignments, and arranging for the computer lab through their technology learning specialists or assistants.
In sum, ICT offers students more time to explore beyond the mechanics of course content allowing them to better understand concepts. The use of ICT also changes the teaching and learning relationship. The relationship between teacher and learner is sometimes reversed with regards to information technology. This relationship boosts students’ confidence when they are able to help teachers with technical issues in the classroom. Therefore, ICT changes the traditional teacher centered approach, and requires teachers to be more creative in customizing and adapting their own material.
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
Instructional materials, also known as teaching/learning materials, are any collection of materials including animate and inanimate objects and human and non-human resources that a teacher may use in teaching and learning situations to help achieve desired learning objectives.
Importance of instructional materials:
1. The essence of producing instructional materials, is to facilitate the teaching learning process. The essence is not to use such instructional materials as objects of decoration in our classroom or as objects to be presented during award wining national exhibitions on improved instructional materials.
If the essence of producing instructional materials is to use such materials to facilitate teaching learning, it therefore seems logical that the best approach to adopt in any production exercise is to predict out production on research findings on how individuals learn. Besides, there are for instance, many factors that affect attention of human beings. There are also ideas about how we perceive objects. Hence, for a classroom teacher, who wants .to produce instructional materials, his production
has to be on sound principles.
2. While presenting various learning theories, one has to be sure that a classroom teacher is guided by
expert ideas during his production and utilization of instructional materials.
3. They supply a concrete basis for concept ional thinking and reduce meaning less work responses for pupils as it makes learning more permanent.
4. Instructional materials have a high degree of interest for the learner; for they offer a reality of experience, which stimulates self-activity on the part of pupils.
5. Instructional materials develop a continuity of thought, this is especially true of motion pictures, as
they provide experiences not, easily obtained through other materials and contribute to the efficiency, department and variety of learning
ICT AND THE AVAILABILITY OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
Integration of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) in education refers to the use of computer based communication that incorporates into daily classroom instructional process. In conjunction with preparing students for the current digital era, teachers are seen as the key players in using ICT in their daily classrooms. This is due to the capability of ICT in providing dynamic and proactive teaching-learning environment. While, the aim of ICT integration is to improve and increase the quality, accessibility and cost-efficiency of the delivery of instruction to students, it also refers to benefits from networking the learning communities to face the challenges of current globalization. Process of adoption of ICT is not a single step, but it is ongoing and continuous steps that fully support teaching and learning and information resources.
ICT integration in education generally means technology-based teaching and learning process that closely relates to the utilization of learning technologies in schools. Due to the fact that students are familiar with technology and they will learn better within technology-based environment, the issue of ICT integration in schools, specifically in the classroom is vital. This is because; the use of technology in education contributes a lot in the pedagogical aspects in which the application of ICT will lead to effective learning with the help and supports from ICT elements and components. It is right to say that almost all ranges of subjects’ starts from mathematics, science, languages, arts and humanistic and other major fields can be learned more effectively through technology-based tools and equipment. In addition, ICT provides the help and complementary supports for both teachers and students where it involves effective learning with the help of the computers to serve the purpose of learning aids.
However, Computers and technology does not act as a replacing tool for quality teachers but instead they are considered as an add-on supplements needed for the better teaching and learning. The need for ICT integration in education is crucial, because with the help of technology, teaching and learning is not only happening in the school environment, but also can happen even if teachers and students are physically in distance. However, ICT integration is not a one-step learning process, but it is a continual process of learning that provides proactive teaching-learning environment.
Instructional materials are critical ingredients in learning and that the curriculum could not be easily implemented without them. A teacher who has adequate and relevant teaching facilities is more confident, effective and productive. Relevant instructional materials enable the learners to have a clear understanding of Conflict and Conflict Resolution. Instructional materials are essential since they help the teacher and learners avoid overemphasis on recitation and rote learning that can easily dominate a lesson. Resource materials allow learners to have practical experiences which help them to develop skills and concepts and to work in a variety of ways. People also learn more and faster through the senses of sight and hearing compared to other senses.
ICT can be used in various ways where it helps both teachers and students to learn about their respective subject areas. A technology- based teaching and learning offers various interesting ways which includes educational videos, stimulation, storage of data, the usage of databases, mind-mapping, guided discovery, brainstorming, music, and World Wide Web (www) that will make the learning process more fulfilling and meaningful. On the other hand, students will benefit from ICT integration where they are not bounded to the limited curriculum and resources, instead hands-on activities in a technology-based course is designed to help them to stimulate their understanding about the subject. It also helps teachers to design their lesson plans in an effective, creative and interesting approach that would result in students’ active learning. Previous researches proved that use of ICT in teaching will enhance the learning process and maximizes the students’ abilities in active learning.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Technology-based teaching and learning can make many changes in school that requires for proper planning and policy making. The use of ICT is beneficial to students and teachers.
Therefore, the use of relevant instructional materials helps and enhances teachers to teach effectively and productivity during teaching process. Honestly, a teacher who makes use of appropriate instructional materials to supplement his teaching will help and enhance learners’ innovative and creative thinking as well as help them become believable spontaneous and eagerness in any lesson.

Academic performance/Achievement' is one of the signicant predictor in the lives of students. It's the outcome of education and it foretells the extent to which the students, teachers and educational institutions have attained their educational goals. Academic achievement is important because it promotes success later and in current life. Among the various influencing factors of academic achievement like socio-economic factors, parent factors, peer factors, school factors, for obtaining an optimal academic achievement, student's academic or learning behavior is an equally important factor in ascertaining the academic achievement of students. It includes student's outlook, choice, his/her persistence, his/her efforts in learning and how he/she relates to the people that make up the school community. Study skills are often determined by the student's learning behavior which affects their learning pattern.

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Learning Behavior is the mental readiness of the students to learn which indicates their resourcefulness, creative thinking and imaginative activities, love for their learning, high interest for reading and writing and also having better psychological adjustment in class and school. It depends upon the emotional and social climate of the home and school. Good schools make a contribution to develop such climate of learning. Among a variety of factors, such as teacher involvement, parental investment, school quality and student motivation affecting the academic life of students, it is student's academic behavior which plays a major role in academic achievement. It is highlighted that students having disruptive behavior such as bullying other students, talking during lectures or by requiring the teacher to interrupt lessons to discipline them can have a negative effect on entire classroom.
STUDENTS BEHAVIOUR
Students learn behaviours through the feedback and consequences they receive at home or school. Sometimes feedback or consequences unintentionally reinforce negative behaviours. For example, a teacher responds to a student who frequently calls out in class by giving him more attention, which is what he wants. A good behaviour is important because learning requires behavior that lets you fully participate in the lesson, and allow other students to do work as well. A good student is one that is prepared, active, safe, interacting, and helping.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.
Academic performance is also the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic achievement is important for the successful development of young people in society. Students who do well in school are better able to make the transition into adulthood and to achieve occupational and economic success.
STUDENTS BEHAVIOUR AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Education system is rapidly changing where much of the attention currently given to improving students’ academic achievement addresses issues of curriculum, instructional strategies, and interventions or services for students. However, even after addressing these issues, barriers still remain for some students. Approaches aimed at improving school and classroom environments, including reducing the negative effects of disruptive or distracting behaviors, can enhance the chances that effective teaching and learning will occur, both for the students exhibiting problem behaviors and for their classmates. An estimated one-third of students fail to learn because of psychosocial problems that interfere with their ability to fully attend to and engage in instructional activities, prompting a call for new directions for addressing barriers to learning. Increased academic pressure in addition to lots of exposure to audio-visual media has changed the mind set of students alarmingly causing behavioral problems.
Schooling is an intrinsically social enterprise. Student behavior is shaped by and exhibited and interpreted in a social context that involves multiple actors viz. teachers, students, school staff etc. It includes multiple settings like classrooms, corridors, common areas, laboratories, lunch room, and playground. Schools are institutions with multiple goals like enhancing academic performance, encouraging a holistic development of the student. Positive behavior is more likely to thrive when relationships at all levels are trusting and supportive and reflect a shared commitment to establish a healthy school and community. Problem behavior of students not only interrupts teacher’s lesson plans but also disturbs other student’s learning process as well as their academic performance. Such students test teacher’s patience as a result many feeling overwhelmed, helpless and make teaching as one of the most difficult aspects of a teacher's job. The most common problem behaviors in the classroom teachers notice are a student's lack of focus, and the inability to sit/stand for an appropria te length of time required for effectively learning.
If a student has a great relationship with reading and often chooses leisurely reading, then the student is likely going to score well on any assessment of screeners. “Adolescents’ reading skills play a crucial role in their educational success as most curriculum subjects use text-based materials for study”. If a child is a struggling reader, they are often less motivated to read independently. If the child is less likely to read independently, then they are more likely to continue to struggle. The low academic achievements will often lead to negative behaviors. If these habits continue and the child is not given opportunities to change at a younger age, then they are more likely to continue in this rut. Teacher motivation and early interventions are the ingredients for success for these students.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Student’s behavior reflects the interaction of their temperament and inherited personality, the history of their experiences, and the particular nature of each situation. In most circumstances it is impossible to determine what proportion each of these elements contributes to a given manifestation. It also differ in proportions which vary from student to student and even from situation to situation for a single student. Although it is difficult to modify personality of a student having problem behavior, it is possible to modify behavior by identifying and correcting adverse situations in the environment and by introducing appropriate interventions. If adverse environmental conditions are corrected at an early stage, there is a greater possibility of preventing or diminishing their impact on behavioral pattern of student in question.

Peers are a pervasive aspect of our social life. They entail a broad range of people who surround us in our everyday lives from early childhood until old age. Members of the same classroom, community, work or sports team constitute important and highly salient peer-group contexts. In addition, we seek and maintain a number of dyadic relationships with peers, such as with a close friend, an acquaintance, a flat mate, a colleague, a fellow student or a neighbor. Considering the omnipresence of peers in our lives, it is likely that they influence who we are. This might be particularly true in contemporary society, in which people switch partners more often than in the past and in which families are spread out over larger distances changes that might render peers an influential social factor.

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Peer group has a lot to do with personality development this is because of their dynamic interplay which has been considered to play a key role in personality maturation, because identities are not construed by individuals alone but negotiated in social interaction processes between individuals.

PEER GROUP

Peers are defined as ‘belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade, or statuses. Similarly, peers tend to resemble each other concerning individual characteristics. This is called homophile and is captured in the notion that ‘birds of a feather flock together’. In younger life phases, peer groups tend to be homogeneous concerning individual characteristics such as gender, age, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. For instance, children and adolescents tend to segregate into groups of the own gender and age. This homogeneity decreases from middle adolescence on. In adulthood, peer networks become much more gender-integrated than in adolescence. Similarly, age homogeneity decreases with the decreasing influence of institutions that create opportunities for contact with peers of the same age, such as school.
Peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests (homophile), age, background, or social status. The members of this group are likely to influence the person's beliefs and behavior.
During adolescence, peer groups tend to face dramatic changes. Adolescents tend to spend more time with their peers and have less adult supervision. Adolescents' communication shifts during this time as well. They prefer to talk about school and their careers with their parents, and they enjoy talking about sex and other interpersonal relationships with their peers. Children look to join peer groups who accept them, even if the group is involved in negative activities. Children are less likely to accept those who are different from them.
At an early age, the peer group becomes an important part of socialization. Unlike other agents of socialization, such as family and school, peer groups allow children to escape the direct supervision of adults. Among peers, children learn to form relationships on their own, and have the chance to discuss interests that adults may not share with children, such as clothing and popular music, or may not permit, such as drugs and sex. Peer groups can have great influence or peer pressure on each other's behavior, depending on the amount of pressure. However, currently more than 23 percent of children globally lack enough connections with their age group, and their cognitive, emotional and social development is delayed than other kids.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Personality development encompasses the dynamic construction and deconstruction of integrative characteristics that distinguish an individual in terms of interpersonal behavioral traits. Indeed, personality development is ever-changing and subject to contextual factors and life-altering experiences.
Personality development also refers to how the organized patterns of behavior that make up each person's unique personality emerge over time. Many factors go into influencing personality, including genetics, environment, parenting, and societal variables.
TYPES OF PERSONALITY
The Following are the main types of personality
1. Introvert and extrovert personalities
2. Type A and type B personalities
3. Judging and perceptive personalities
Introvert personalities
Introvert persons with introvert orientation are primarily oriented to the subjected world. They look inward, process their thoughts and ideas within themselves. They also avoid social contacts and initiating interaction with other group members.
Extrovert personalities
Simply speaking extrovert is just contrary to introverts. They refer to the level of comfort ability with relationship to others. They represents active, assertive, talkative, outgoing, social energetic and ambitious.
Type A and type B personalities
Type A- these people are known for their hard working personality and high achievement oriented. They are also impatient and aggressive with competitive drive etc. such people are known to be very productive.
Type B: they are easy-going, sociable and free spirited. They are also non-competitive which is typical of type B personality.
Judging and perceptive personalities
These people do better on tasks involving accuracy rather than speed and team work. They are highly judgmental. They like to follow a plan, make decisions and need only what is essential for their work.
PEER GROUP AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT AMONG YOUTHS
Socialization in peer groups becomes an increasingly important determinant of personality development that accounts, for example, in large parts for personality differences between siblings. Siblings may as well experience environmental differences. Siblings who grow up in the same family become different from each other not only because 50% of their genes differ, but also because they belong to different peer groups. The importance of peers is beyond adolescence, peers account for a substantial share of variance in lifespan personality development. Peer-group processes of within-group assimilation lead to peer-group members’ personalities becoming more similar over time; at the same time, between-group differences increase. Nevertheless, peer-group members also differ in their personality development, which is driven by unique dyadic relationship experiences.
Adolescence is a period during which great differentiation takes place on the social terrain. Although adolescents are still close to their parents, they spend increasingly more time with their friends. Their physical and emotional dependence on their parents decreases and they move closer to the peer group. During this time, the personality development of adolescents (specifically identity formation) reaches a crisis point, and the development of a unique and stable personality is often a very difficult aspect to deal with. The peer group has a stronger influence on the personality development of the adolescent than parents, brothers, sisters, family, friends, teachers, or any other adults. To a large extent, that which a person becomes is, therefore, a result of heredity and the person's relationship with the pee r group and, to a lesser extent, a result of parent relationships.
Peer relationships also provide a unique context in which children learn a range of critical social emotional skills, such as empathy, cooperation, and problem-solving strategies. Peer relationships can also contribute negatively or positively to overall personality development as well as social emotional development through bullying, exclusion, and deviant peer processes.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, peers are a pervasive aspect of our social lives that impact us from childhood to old age. Whereas individual peer characteristics vary between life phases, equality matching characterizes peer relationships across the entire lifespan. The concrete manifestations of reciprocal exchange can, however, manifest in different forms over the lifespan, and thus, the roles and functions of peers can differ across life phases. By pointing to the complex nature of peers and their specific but sustained relevance across different life phases.
Peer groups can influence personality development by defining peer-group norms that increase similarity among group members and explain differences between peer groups. Dyadic peer relationships influence personality development by dyad-specific interaction patterns and relationship characteristics that increase individual differences. As such, they account for differences in personality development within peer groups.
Finally, the peer group has a stronger influence on the personality development of the adolescent than parents, brothers, sisters, family, friends, teachers, or any other adults. To a large extent, that which a person becomes is, therefore, a result of heredity and the person's relationship with the pee r group and, to a lesser extent, a result of parent relationships.

Parental involvement in students’ academic achievement has attracted many educators and researchers in the field of education in the world. Parental involvement emerged as compensation programme among other educational programmes to encourage low income parents to prepare their children for more successful schools and prevent education delays for children who are at risk. It was just an appeal to support lower school achievers through parents’ intervention. Parental involvement was established as the programme for low income kindergarten and first graders students to sustain compulsory education programme. Its execution manifested positive results by equipping parents with skills on how to help their children with home works for enhancement of education progress.

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Being potential in education, attempt to increase parental involvement in school had made improvement. When parents are involved in their children’s education, it enhances commitment and interests. Therefore, it is ideal for educationalist to ensure all challenges that are thought to hinder parental involvement are worked through, particularly in senior secondary schools where currently students’ academic achievement is declining. Similarly, government should promote parental involvement through policy statements that allow formulation of parent–school association with the intention of enhancing children’s education.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Parental involvement in the education of students begins at home with the parents providing a safe and healthy environment, appropriate learning experiences, support, and a positive attitude about school. Several studies indicate increased academic achievement with students that have involved parents. Parental involvement is most effective when viewed as a partnership between educators and parents. By examining parents’ and teachers’ perceptions, educators and parents should have a better understanding of effective parental involvement practices in promoting student achievement. Parental involvement and its effects on the educational process over the years has been very important. The roles of parental involvement can be summerized below:
Parenting – includes all of the activities that parents engage in to raise happy, healthy children who become capable students. Unlike teachers, whose influence on a child’s is relatively limited, parents maintain a life-long commitment to their children. Activities that support this type of involvement provide information to parents about their child’s development, health, safety, or home conditions that can support student learning.
Communicating – Familes and schools communicate with each other in multiple ways. Schools send home notes and flyers about important events and activities. Parents give teachers information about their child’s health and educational history. A school website is an additional mode of communication with parents and families. Includes: conferences with every parent at least once a year, language translators to assist families as needed, regular schedule of useful notices, memos, phone calls, newsletters, and other communications.
Volunteering – applies to recruiting and organising help and support from parents for school programmes and students’ activities. There are three basic ways that individuals volunteer in education. First, they may volunteer in the school or classroom by helping teachers and adminstrators as tutors or assistants. Second, they may volunteer for the school; for instance, fundraising for an event or promoting a school in the community. Finally, they may volunteer as a member of an audience, attending school programmes or performances. Includes: school/classroom volunteer programme to help teachers, administrators, students, and other parents, parent room or family center for volunteer work, meetings, and resources for families, annual postcard survey to identify all available talents, times, and locations of volunteers.
Learning at home – pertains to providing ideas and information to parents about how they can best assist their children with homework and curricular-related decisions and activities. Parents helping their children with homework or taking them to a museum, are examples of this type of involvement. These activities produce a school-oriented family and encourage parents to interact with the school curriculum. Activities to encourage learning at home provide parents with information on what children are doing in the classroom and how to help them with homework.
Decision making – refers to including parents in school decisions and to developing parent leaders and representatives. Parents participate in school decision making when they become part of school governance committees or join organizations, such as the parent/teachers association. Other decision-making activities include taking on leadership roles that involve disseminating information to other parent’s organizations, advisory councils, or committees for parent leadership and participation, independent advocacy groups to lobby for school reform and improvements, networks to link all families with parent representatives.
Collaborating with the community – pertains to identifying and integrating communities’’ services and resources to support and strengthen schools, students, and their families. Includes: information for students and families on community health, cultural, recreational, social support, and other programmes/services, information on community activities that link to learning skills and talents, including summer programmes for students

TRUANCY

Truancy, or the habitual act of being absent from school without permission, is a major issue affecting the overall success of the school in which I am employed. Truancy may be identified differently between districts, states, or governments; however, consecutive unexcused absences from school is the most common and acceptable definition. Hundreds of thousands of students are absent from school without permissible excuses each day, and this issue is ranked among the top ten problems facing schools across the country. Therefore, truancy extends nationally and contributes significantly towards the undermining of the educational system. Moreover, 1.5%, 1.8%, 2.0%, and 2.4% of the entire student population of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ulster respectively miss class without authorization, and one in five students are identified as committing truancy in Scotland each day, thereby expanding the matter globally. Attendance can e regarded as the single most critical variable in measuring students’ achievement levels; therefore, it is imperative that corrective action be taken against chronic absenteeism immediately. To eliminate, or at least decrease truant behavior, possible causes for the behavior must be identified. The possible short-term and long-term effects of unexcused school non-attendance are also of value in ascertaining the immediacy and importance of the issue. Next, possible solutions towards decreasing, preventing, and/or eliminating the behavior altogether should be acknowledged. After considering several solutions, a conclusion will be presented in regard to which solution, or combination of solutions would be most beneficial to initiate in my school.

CAUSES OF TRUANCY

School factors that may cause truant behavior include, but are not limited to school climate, class size, attitudes, ability to meet each student’s diverse needs, and the school’s discipline policy regarding truancy. Students that attend large schools may feel isolated or alienated in their school setting, so to escape these feelings they choose not to attend. These students do not feel comfortable, wanted, valued, accepted, or secure; they are lacking a connection to a trustworthy somebody within the school. In oversized classrooms, students’ diverse needs, whether they are instructional, social, or a various other, cannot consistently be met and student-teacher relationships cannot be developed. This leads to a school climate and attitude in which each individual must fend for himself. Economic influences that may cause truant behavior include, but are not limited to living situation and student employment. Student variables that may cause truant behavior include, but are not limited to physical and mental health problems, substance abuse, drug use, perception of self, and detachment from school.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND TRUANCY AMONG STUDENTS

Parental involvement in schooling enhances students’ academic performance, positive attitude towards school, time spent on homework and regular school attendance behaviour. If parents however, abdicate their responsibility towards their children to their teachers, the students may become delinquent. Again, parents’ inability to inculcate good moral values may also negatively affect their children’s academic achievement. Truants see the time they leave home for school as a period of freedom. Truants leave home but do not go to school or escape from school to engage in negative activities that caught their imagination and fancy. Truancy affects the school social environment creating a climate of fear and inhibiting students’ ability to learn. The entrenched truancy culture in the homes, school and society coupled with insensitive response to truancy by those in authority affects students’ attitude to truancy. This is further aggravated by the scarcity of effective techniques to prevent truancy among students by counsellors and teachers.

In Africa, women are considered as men’s properties or pleasure objects. They are also considered as a ‘machine’ meant for producing children. These situations have resulted in unfair treatment of women especially with regards to education of the male-child than the female child. In the traditional Nigerian society; there exists the belief that women are second class citizen. Gender inequality in Nigeria is promoted by religious and communal customs. Young girls particularly in Northern Nigeria are denied the benefit of education. This has given consequences for both the individual and the society at large
THE GIRL CHILD
The girl-child is a biological female offspring from birth to eighteen (18) years of age. This is the age before one becomes young adult. This period covers the crèche, nursery or early childhood (0 – 5 years), primary (6 – 12 years) and secondary school (12 – 18 years). During this period, the young child is totally under the care of the adult who may be her parents or guardians and older siblings. It is made up of infancy, childhood, early and late adolescence stages of development. During this period, the girl-child is malleable, builds and develops her personality and character. She is very dependent on the significant others, those on whom she models her behaviour, through observation, repetition and imitation. Her physical, mental, social, spiritual and emotional developments start and progress to get to the peak at the young adult stage.
GIRL CHILD EDUCATION
Education is an important foundation to imp-rove the status of women and has also been recognised as a fundamental strategy for development. No sustainable development is possible if women remain uneducated, discriminated against and disenfranchised. Improving and widening access to education, especially basic education, is not only an objective in itself but also accelerates social and economic advancement. The evidence is out: nations that invest in girls‟ education enhance economic productivity and growth. In fact, the World Bank has stated that there is no investment more effective for achieving development goals than educating girls. The second Millennium Development Goal challenges the international community‟s commitment to ensure universal primary school completion and to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2015.

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This goal is grounded in the recognition that access to basic education is a human right, and a vital part of individuals‟ capacity to lead lives that they value. In addition, education is a powerful instrument that enables women to access a variety of opportunities, while rendering them less vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, abuse, and exploitation. Maternal mortality is one of the strongest predictors of the health of a nation and reflects the disparities between wealthy and poor nations more than any other measure of health. As an indicator of inequality, maternal mortality is considered by many to be a measure of a woman’s places in society, representing the accessibility of social sup- port, economic opportunities, and health care. In addition, the two measures of gender inequality relating to education, (female literacy rate and combined education enrolment ratio) are predictors of maternal mortality. Improving basic education, especially female education, has a powerful influence on both mortality and fertility. Indeed, the close relationship between education and demographic changes has clearly emerged in a number of recent empirical studies. A wide range of theoretical analyses from different disciplines confirms that education improves health and reduces fertility. For example, women with formal education are much more likely to use reliable family planning methods, delay marriage and childbearing, and have fewer (and healthier) babies than women with no formal education.
RURAL DEVELOPMENT
Rural development involves efforts that are economic and social in nature intended to encourage concepts of retention, growth, and expansion in areas outside cities, including improving quality of life for rural residents through such activity.
The rural, beyond being defined as that which is not urban, is a contested space from a definitional standpoint. Rural can be taken to mean from or of open areas – those outside cities. Rural has a common strand of meaning with country or countryside but is more frequently encountered with such nomenclature in public policy. Rural, as a word, is also endowed with other sorts of value: it is associated with agriculture and farming and people from outside city areas. Connections are made between people from rural areas and the land itself. While a contrasting relationship might be supposed between rural and urban, more properly, a continuum exists between the two as definitions of rural and agriculture are altered due to the forces of modern living and ultimately bear less resemblance to historical identities. Nevertheless, rural areas have a rich history and identity of their own, even while they share some aspects in common with urban areas. Rural development, for purposes of this entry, encompasses efforts that are economic and social in nature, intended to encourage growth or expansion in areas outside cities. This entry considers rural development from a variety of perspectives, including economic aspects, infrastructure and service considerations, sociocultural factors, and the role of stakeholders.
GIRL CHILD EDUCATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
Education is the process through which individuals are made functional members of their society. It is a process through which the young acquires knowledge and realizes her potentials and uses them for self-actualization. It enables her to be useful to herself and others. It is a means of preserving, transmitting and improving the culture of the society. In every society education connotes acquisition of something good, something worthwhile. Women make up more than half of the Nigerian population, and they have been known to have contributed in many ways to the rural development and the society at large. Hence, for the girl-child to face the challenges of our time, full participation requires they have access to the benefits of formal and informal education to the same level, and of the same quality as that given to the men. That is the only way the girl-child can contribute maximally to the development of their communities and Nigeria at large.

Examination in school is usually done for purposes of assessment, to assign students grades (from tests in classrooms) or rank them in terms of abilities (in standardized tests). Yet tests can serve other purposes in educational settings that greatly improve performance.
Every educational system consists of an examination system through which the qualities and abilities of the students are assessed by giving those grades and positions. “Examination tests the efficiency of the education provides, we shall need to test what it is, students can do, rather what he knows.” It means, the ultimate objectives of the examination is to measure the performance level of the students and without this, we cannot know what the students attain from their educational system. So examination is doing the job of final appraisal of student achievement.

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Examination therefore, is a true test of students’ performance and retentive ability in the sense that the performance of students during an examination or the grades of students determine how well they understand the course/subject and also how they retain what they studied and what is being thought in class.

EXAMINATION

A test or examination is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-takers knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics.
Exams are a form of learning activity they can enable students to see the material from a different perspective. They also provide feedback that students can then use to improve their understanding and also identify weaknesses and correct them.
As exams develop them as an individual, give values, extraordinary thinking, self assessment, overcome failures, and filling them with positivity to improve the quality of education. Exams help every teacher to understand the mental capacity of the students and to rectify their shortcomings. However, the purpose of the test is to make a final review of the topics covered and assessment of each student's knowledge of the subject.

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.
Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic achievement is important for the successful development of young people in society. Students who do well in school are better able to make the transition into adulthood and to achieve occupational and economic success.

STUDENTS RETENTIVE ABILITY

Retention could be said to be ability of a student to store, retain and subsequently recall information learnt in the classroom or in the course of study. It is believed that increase in knowledge lies solely on the ability to remember. If an individual could not grasp and keep hold of what was taught and learnt, it would seem like trying to fill a bucket without bottom with water. This means that if one cannot retain what one learnt then there’s no need expecting one to perform in that activity in the future.
Information is retained in human memory stores in different ways, but it is primarily done so through active learning, repetition and recall. Information that is encoded and stored within memory stores can often be forgotten. There are multiple explanations for why this happens. These include: ineffective encoding of material, decay of information, interference, competition of newly learned material and retrieval failure. There are multiple ways of improving the abilities of human memory and retention when engaging in learning. These depend on the nature of how the information was originally encoded into memory stores, and whether the stored material is regularly retrieved and recalled.
The retention and retrieval of information in memory requires the information to be firmly embedded within a neural network; which can be done so through traditional methods of repetition and connecting new information with old information. The process of repetition facilitates the process within the brain of solidifying connections. When learning new information, the brain seeks to associate this material with previously stored knowledge through assimilation. When we learn something new, our brain creates new neural pathways. Therefore, repetition when engaging in learning is important for retaining this information in long-term memory stores.

EXAMINATION A TRUE TEST OF STUDENTS RETAINTIVE ABILITY

“Examination is conducted to test the ability of the student and find out if he has reached a certain standard of academic learning and knowledge. They scrutinize and measure the student ‘s capabilities against skill in answering a question under the condition imposed by the examiner.” The aim of the examination is to evaluate the ability of candidates. Examination supplies a tangible proof of fitness of a student for high class or a particular professional course.
Forgetting is ubiquitous as human memory is imperfect. It happens regardless of the nature of the material being taught, regardless of the age or background of the learner. Students at every educational level are challenged by an ever-growing amount of material to review and an ongoing imperative to master new material. Teachers rightfully focus their efforts on helping students to acquire new knowledge and skills, but newly acquired information is vulnerable and easily slips away from the memory. Memory is the mechanism that allows us to retain and retrieve information over time. Short-term memory contains our moment-to-moment conscious thoughts and perceptions and Long term memory is the semi-permanent memory store, which endures for a lifetime and aids us in learning new information. Hence, students who attend classes regularly have better memory, good in learning, achieve higher marks and have better knowledge retaining ability.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, teachers, parents, students and all educational stakeholders can tell how students perform through examination whether internal or external examinations. It is a yardstick used to ascertain the level of students’ retentive memory as well as comprehension of courses/subjects taught in the classroom.

Education is considered imperative for not only the progress of the individuals, but also for the development of community and nation. In order to bring about improvements in all aspects, and utilize modern and innovative techniques and methods, individuals need to generate awareness and enhance their educational skills.
Furthermore, Education is one of the imperative aspects that not only inculcates the essential skills, abilities and knowledge among the individuals, but also leads to overall growth and progress of the individuals, community and nation as a whole. An educated person is not only able to accomplish his desired goals and objectives, but is also able to render an efficient contribution towards the well-being of the community. The inculcation of academic knowledge, skills, abilities and proficiency among the individuals is enhanced through learning and academic performance. Parental level of education is a decisive factor in the educational attainment of their children. Parents’ level of education is important to schooling as parents want their children to maintain the status quo. The educational background on the other hand basically means the type of education acquired by an individual.

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Academic achievement or academic performance is the extent to which a student, teacher or institution has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Completion of educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor's degrees represent academic achievement.

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Academic performance is the measurement of student achievement across various academic subjects. Teachers and education officials typically measure achievement using classroom performance, graduation rates and results from standardized tests.
Academic achievement is important for the successful development of young people in society. Students who do well in school are better able to make the transition into adulthood and to achieve occupational and economic success.
ACADEMIC AMBITION OF THE STUDENT
The ability to set goals and pursue these goals is sometimes referred to as student’s academic ambition. Ambitions can be linked to the seeking of success and the avoidance of failure. Ambition can also be seen as the persistent and generalized striving for success, attainment, and accomplishment. In short, ambition is about attaining rather than achieving.
Students who choose to set difficult goals for themselves tend to become task oriented, with a sense of purpose for their lives. Certainly, academic ambition can influence students' learning, preparation for life choices, academic motivation and achievement. Academic ambitions is the "student's ability to identify and set goals for the future, while being inspired in the present to work toward those goals". Ambition thus, represents the perception that an activity is important as a means to future goals. It reflects individuals' perceptions that it is both possible and desirable to think in future terms and to plan for the future.
Individuals’ ambitions are considered important because they might influence key choices, and outcomes such as educational achievement. In fact, young people with higher educational ambitions have greater motivation and higher educational attainment than their peers. Undeniably, the relationship between educational outcomes and academic ambitions seems to be a complex one. Ambition thus, can both be a predictor of educational achievement and an outcome of it, and might be influenced by self-efficacy, personal traits, experiences and mediating family factors.
PARENT EDUCATON
Parents are the most immediate relation of a child. Educated parents better understand the educational needs and their children’s aptitude. They, thus help their children in their early education which affects their proficiency in their relative area of knowledge. Parents’ education or academic background definitely contributes immensely toward the academic life of children.
Parents’ level of education is the most important factor affecting students’ academic achievement. Parents’ educational background influences the academic achievement of students. This is because the parents would be in a good position to act as second teachers to their children; and even guide and counsel them on the best way to perform well in education and provide the necessary materials needed by them. Children who come from an educated home would like to follow the steps of their family and by this, works actively in their studies. However, a child from a well-educated family with high socio-economic status is more likely to perform better than a child from an illiterate family apparently because children from an educated family are seen to have lots of support such as a decent and good environment for academic work, parental support and guidance, enough textual and academic materials and decent feeding. Virtually in all nations, children of parents high on the educational, occupation and social scale have far better chance of getting into good schools than equally bright children of ordinary workers or farmers. In fact, the most important factor associated with the educational achievement of children is not race, ethnicity or immigrant status; instead the most critical factor is parents’ education.
ACADEMIC AMBITION OF A CHILD AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Nowadays we witness successive and comprehensive developments and transformations in all life domains, which in turn influence the personality. Variables of the personality have a clear effect upon the behaviors and activities of individuals. This in turn encourages individuals to invest all their potentials to achieve their ambitions and provide meanings and values to life. Individuals are the best able to achieve happiness and success by ability to give and excel. Ambition level is an indicator of personal active characteristics and one of its important variables because it describes interaction with the environment in order to adjustment and develops. This affects social behavior enabling individuals to recognize the meaning of existence by acting in a way that provides confidence and develops skills, practices and thinking styles and ensures the existence of a high level of self-efficacy. Ambition level contributes fundamentally in the processes of learning and teaching.
Therefore, academic ambition plays a significant role in shaping an individual’s study behavior in any higher education setting because it serves as motivation for the individual to achieve academic excellence. The most common motivations for course or programme completion relate to academic ambition. Academic ambition has a lot of impact on academic and career success. Students with high educational and academic ambition achieved better results than those with low academic ambition. Ambitious career plans are good predictors of higher school achievement because they help students demonstrate greater interest in their coursework.
More so, students with greater clarity about why they choose their course and whether the chosen course has a direct pathway to their preferred career have better outcomes in terms of academic performance. Academic ambition is the professional path one wishes to follow and maintain; it is a lifelong process that demands accurate perceptions of ability, potential and achievement. Academic ambition will help an individual in his/her long-term individual work-related goals in future. Therefore, career aspirations revolve around the ambitions and inspirations of students. Ambition is defined as the perception that an activity is important as a means to achieve a future goal. Thus, if a student has the desire to achieve a future goal, he/she will be more ambitious and strive for the goal he/she has set for him/herself. Inspiration reflects activity which is exciting and enjoyable to the individual.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the academic ambition of students can greatly influence on their academic performance. This is because, students with ambition and educated parents would strive to do better and creditably well in order to achieve their goal and aspirations in life which begins with having a good academic performance. Also, parents must encourage their children to be academically ambitious and when they do, they must work hard in order to succeed in their ambition. Also, educated parents tend to influence the child’s academic ambition much more than that of the uneducated parents.

Information and communications technology or (ICT) is extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.

In recent years, progress in information and communication technology (ICT) has caused many structural changes such as reorganizing of economics, globalization, and trade extension, which leads to capital flows and enhancing information availability.

Moreover, ICT plays a significant role in development of each economic sector. Growth economists predict that economic growth is driven by investments in ICT. At the present time, ICT has become a serious part of economy. This has led to its reoccurring as a major topic of discuss in most economics undergraduate research topics in diverse institutions in Nigeria.

Almost all firms and consumers use computers and Internet connection for economic purposes, such as providing consumers with some more diversified and customized products, improving product quality, and selling goods and services. Evidently, the extension of ICT and its influences on economic growth in both developed and developing countries has increased very fast during the last two decades.

Election Process: The contribution of ICT to the economy can be visible in its electioneering process. With the use of ICT election process have been modified and electronicised. Hence, making the cumbersome process of election easy. This in a way impacts positively on the economy.

Global Partnership: The introduction of ICT to the economy has encouraged global partnership. In terms of information gathering and dissemination, the wide use of cable and satellite networks has improved the rate of information sharing and reception from media organizations to their audiences.

More so, the use of twitter has so much motivated the citizen journalism. It has inspired the emancipation of user generated content in the idea of global communication. The benefits of ICT to an economy cannot be overemphasized.

In a complete project in the academia, chapter two has always been slated for literature review or what some people will call review of related literature. It involves a detailed research on previous works, opinions, recommendations etc that have been done on that area.

In any academic project, arrangement matters a lot, in this case, when writing chapter two of your project which is the literature review, it must be properly arranged; from the introduction which talks a little about the summary of the chapter, conceptual framework, which must discuss elaborately the subject matter with compulsory citations following the explanation of the subject matter.

The reason citation is really compulsory in this chapter is because the researcher must prove to those that are reading the project that the words used is not just a mere word but that they are quoted from people. Conceptual framework must include all the concept of a given subject matter.

For instance, a topic in education is being given to be “motivational techniques and student academic achievement in secondary schools in Nigeria” your conceptual framework will be; concept of motivation: at this point you discuss everything that has to do with motivation, types of motivation, importance of motivation, method of motivating secondary school students, effect of motivation on secondary school student, the relationship between teacher motivational techniques and academic achievement of secondary school students.

Don’t forget that all of these must have citations. Having done that, the next thing is to move to the different theories guiding motivation, like the Maslow's theory of motivation, theory of learning and so on.

The next one is the empirical review, empirical review in a complete project has to do with studies in the likes of your own chosen education project topic; what other researchers did in their project, as well as studies that affiliates to your own chosen topic.