CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The world is becoming more and more competitive. Quality of students academic performance has become the key factor for personal progress. It is the desire of all Parents that their children climb the ladder of academic performance as high level as possible. This desire for high level of performance among secondary school students puts a lot of pressure on students, teachers, psychologist and in general, the educational system itself. In fact, it appeals as if the whole educational system revolves round the academic performance of students. Thus a lot of time and effort has been made by Educationist and psychologist to find various strategies to unraveling the complex determinant of academic performance, such as intelligence, study habit and other personality variables like self concept, anxiety and motivation.

Me Comb etal (1990) suggested that students learning achievement depends on their attitude, motivation performance for success and study habit or skills that people employ to pursue the desire outcome. Bakare (1975) opines that intelligence accounts for little variance in academic performance. Therefore, more emphases had shifted from intellectual factors to non – intellectual factors such as some personality variables like self concept and study habit.

Meanwhile, self concept, which mean the way an individual perceives his or herself, has now been recognized to play a vital role in students academic performance more so, students study habit has been regarded as one of the cardinal variables considered by the present study, it connotes student’s way of study whether systematic, efficient or inefficient which had negative or positive effect on academic performance, whether low or high. Low academic performance means performance below average whereas high academic performance measure up to the